Hello, confession time once again. When it comes to listening to music in my teens and 20’s, I was more often than not, an obnoxious hipster who refused to listen to anything contemporary that was deemed “popular.” While I’ve been working through a lot of those issues these days and can now enjoy up to 30% of popular music that comes out now, I still have a massive backlog to go through. One big artist I’ve egregiously ignored when she was on the Billboards was Amy Winehouse. I knew her name, her image, her scandalous reputation, and eventually, her tragic, untimely death. However, because of her massive rise to fame, I refused to listen to her music.
Having to review the Amy Winehouse biopic Back To Black, I’m not sure if this puts me at more of an advantage or disadvantage. On the one hand, everything I’m learning about her is completely new, and every song performed in the film, I had never listened to. On the other hand…I definitely had to do some research afterward to see what they got right and what they embellished. Back To Black, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, follows the years Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela) began her career as a professional singer through her epic success at the Grammys for her massive hit album in which this film is named after.
While it certainly can’t be defined as anything but a biopic genre film, I find the time period being focused on as well as many of the details about her life during these imperative years to be lacking. I understand that the film is about Amy’s rapid rise to fame, so it’s fitting that we only see those few years. That would be all well and good if we actually did see many of the details surrounding her career in the movie. However, that’s not what the film decided to focus on at all. Instead, we mostly see the nitty gritty of Amy’s personal life during this time being highlighted, with her singing career playing a distant second fiddle of importance.
I’m completely aware that an artist’s personal life is extremely important when it comes to how they were inspired for their art. And of course I think it’s imperative that a biopic portrays their subject as much as a real person as they can. However, if that was the main goal of this film, why did we only see the years surrounding her career? No moments of childhood, nor any of her tragic downfall that eventually lead to her death via alcohol poisoning. Instead, we get quite a lot of content about Amy meeting her future loser husband Blake, (Jack O’Connel), mooning over him, and getting her heart broken by him —twice! I guess he was that big of an inspiration for her music, but I highly doubt he was the only source. I would have loved to see more about her meeting her band, recording her songs, finding joy in performing. Instead, we get moments with Blake, her running from paparazzi, and her gaslighting her family that she’s ok.
Another huge flaw in this film is that they just couldn’t seem to want to make Amy an interesting person. While I admit, while I don’t know much about her, I can tell she has such a story to tell, so much personality that drove her motivation, but all of that seemed very glossed over. We see plenty of her flaws such as her substance abuse, erratic fits of temper, and random decisions. But we never see the why. It’s great when a biopic doesn’t shy away from the negative aspects of the person they’re portraying. But that person still shouldn’t come off as a two-dimensional character that just does these acts of self-destruction for seemingly no reason.
For all of its flaws, there is still some silver lining to this movie. Marisa Abela was excellent as Amy, in both looking and sounding like her. While I doubt anyone could fully replicate Amy’s voice, Marisa gave an admirable effort, albeit in a slightly more raspy indie-girl way. She even captured Amy’s very unique, almost awkward stage presence very well. It was also a pretty film to look at least, each shot really capturing the essence of the early mid 2000’s (believe me, I’m an expert of that era, being only one month apart from Amy in age.)
Personally, I’m still glad to have watched Back to Black. While it was a subpar biopic, it was entertaining, at the very leas. And more importantly, it introduced me to Amy Winehouse’s music, making me fall in love with it. I’m kicking myself for being so stubborn about listening to her, as this was exactly my style.
