Talented singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse’s tragic life was already the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, AMY in 2015, made a few years after her death in 2011at age 27 from alcohol poisoning. So my first reaction on hearing of the biopic drama BACK TO BLACK was to wonder if we needed another Amy Winehouse movie. The excellent 2015 documentary seems to have have told her story well and thoroughly, but reportedly the Winehouse family was unhappy with it. However, the family granted permission to the filmmakers of this new biopic drama, BACK TO BLACK, with access to materials and song use.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and writer Matt Greenhalgh previously collaborated on another music biopic, NOWHERE BOY, a fine drama about the childhood of John Lennon. The filmmakers assert that the Winehouse family had no say on the final film but the family does come across in a more positive light in this drama and they also have a more prominent role than in the 2015 Oscar-winning documentary.
BACK TO BLACK follows the familiar rise and fall pattern of biopics of other gifted but tragic musicians but does feature some nice acting performances and a chance to hear her songs again. It starts out with young Amy (Marisa Abela) on the verge of her fame, surrounded by her loving, working-class, Jewish family in the Southgate section of London. Amy is talented, and ambitious, and encouraged by her beloved paternal grandmother Nan (Leslie Manville), a still-cool, stylish, former jazz singer, who influenced Amy’s love of jazz and her ’50s-’60s fashion style of beehives, heavy eyeliner, and tight retro dresses. Amy is also funny, strong-willed, out-spoken, hot-tempered and driven. She also already has a big drinking problem.
First off, it is important to mention that the documentary is the much better film, and you will learn much more about the talented but self-destruction Amy Winehouse from it than this biopic. BACK TO BLACK often assumes the audience knows things about Amy Winehouse and her life that they may not, such as her struggles with bulimia, which makes for some confusing or even misleading scenes.
That said, Marisa Abela does a fine job portraying Winehouse, capturing her mannerisms, accent and assertive yet funny persona. The same is also true of the wonderful Lesley Manville as her beloved grandmother Cynthia, whom Amy calls Nan. Eddie Marsan is also very good as her father Mitch, along with Jack O’Connell as Amy’s charismatic, handsome but toxic husband Blake. Juliet Cowan plays Amy’s mother Janis Winehouse, a pharmacist suffering from multiple sclerosis, who raised Amy after separating from her father, and Sam Buchanan as Nick Shymansky, Amy’s friend her became her first manager, but the bulk of the narrative is carried by those first four characters.
The best parts of BACK TO BLACK are the cast’s performances and the chance to hear some of Amy Winehouse’s hit songs. However, the drama assumes that audiences know some things about Winehouse that they may not, and if you want to really learn about Amy Winehouse’s life and career, that Oscar-winning documentary is still the better choice. But you do get more of a feel for her family life and growing up Jewish in London’s Southgate in BACK TO BLACK.
Abela does her own singing and while she does well enough, she is an actress, not a singer, and certainly does not have Amy Winehouse’s distinctive, golden voice. Still, Abela does her best to sing in Winehouse’s style, and is at her most convincing singing the signature “Back to Black.” However, it would have better to have used Amy Winehouse’s real voice, instead of following this craze of actors playing famous singer doing their own singing, often with mixed results, and depriving fans of hearing the real star’s voice, the thing that made them famous.
Abela tries to capture Winehouse’s singing style, and does pretty well, but she is better in capturing Winehouse’s speaking voice, her mannerisms, and gives a convincing and touching portrayal of this funny, demanding, and fascinating talented woman who knew what she wanted and had a deep knowledge and love of jazz.
Lesley Manville is marvelous as Amy’s beloved grandmother Cynthia, a jazz singer who dressed stylishly and influenced Amy’s style and encouraged her musical interest from a young age. The film captures how Winehouse adored her paternal grandmother, whom she called Nan, and depicts Amy as she gets her tattoo paying tribute to her. The other delightful performance is from Eddie Marsan as Amy’s taxi-driver dad Mitch, who had a close loving relationship with his daughter but didn’t always make decisions in her best interests. As Amy’s career soars, dad Mitch is more of an ever-present figure, while mom Janice virtually disappears until late in the film. Mitch had a strong influence and worked closely with his daughter as her career took off, but was not always as good an influence.
Audiences may have some confusion over the relationship between Mitch and Cynthia, as Manville is only 12 years older than Marsan, and they look about the same age. It is easy to assume they are siblings rather than mother and son, and the drama does nothing to clarify this situation, one of the drama’s several problems.
The drama gives a little nod, although not enough, to Winehouse’s skill as a songwriter, and accurately depicts her as a perfectionist in her work, at least until drinking and drugging took their toll. While the bulimia is not directly mentioned until the end, the drama does a better job with her alcoholism, Even before her career really launches, Amy has already had a serious drinking problem, including incidents of seizures. A later scene depicts a confrontation with her manager about going to rehab, with her father siding with his daughter after she promises to cut back, something echoed in the lyrics of her song “Rehab.”
The film is stronger and more focused overall in its first half. The drama starts out fairly well, although it focuses more on Amy’s personal and family life than her career and work. However, it makes a turn into a doomed romance story after Amy meets her future husband Blake Fielder-Civil. The turning point comes after a strong, emotionally powerful sequence where Amy meets Blake. Those scenes are very good, with strong romantic chemistry between Abel and O’Connell, laying the groundwork for the obsessive, toxic love affair that follows. But once Amy falls for Blake, the film becomes increasingly disorganized, jumping around in time and failing to explain several things that pop up. There is a scene where the hard-drinking Amy discovers her new love’s drug problem and firmly rejects and even condemns drug use, yet in almost the next scene, we see Amy buying her own drugs, without Blake, leaving us puzzled as to what happened in between. The film continues to deteriorate in that fashion, ans once Manville’s Nan dies, both Amy and this drama go off the rails, morphing into a film about the toxic romance rather than her music, with Amy repeatedly talk about her longings to be a wife and mother.
Whether Blake was the real villain in Amy Winehouse’s life or not is another matter, as it seems more likely a combination of factors, including Amy’s self-destructive behavior, the loss of a strong hand to steady her with the death of her grandmother Cynthia (reportedly the only person she would listen to when she was out-of-control), a shark-like media, family and friends who failed to intervene to protect or help her, and her drug-addicted husband. But in this drama, the major blame is placed on a drug-addict husband who wanted to hitch his wagon to her rising star.
Although there are a few nice concert scenes after the biopic switches to toxic romance, the film continues to unravel, with several scenes that leave the audience confused about what is going on with the singer. While someone might argue that the film’s narrative falling apart might be meant to mirror Winehouse’s increasingly chaotic life, that explanation doesn’t really hold up. The film continues as a confusing mess until fizzles to a weak ending, with Amy walking away from the camera and seeming on the way to recovery, followed by a black screen and texts telling us of her death from alcohol poisoning at age 27. Then instead of just going to black, there is another scenes with Abela, instead of footage of the actual Amy, saying all she wanted to do was entertain with her songs.
Again, despite the strong performances and warm early scenes with family, you will not really learn much about Amy Winehouse in this biopic drama. Again, the 2015 documentary AMY is the better choice, and a better film overall, where you will learn much more about the massively talented but self-destructive Amy Winehouse.
BACK TO BLACK opens Friday, May 17, in theaters.
RATING: 2 out of 4 stars
