Back to Black

There is but a single query that runs through the mind of any follower of Amy Winehouse upon watching director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s ‘Back to Black’, and quite understandably too — What is this f*ckery? In the biopic, Marisa Abela portrays the Camden borough-bred star athlete who was quoted, “I was just one of the girls.”

Her down to earth charm, quick-witted humor, and above all, when she did speak, the remarkable and magnificently gospelly singer that she was. Amy also faced the death of the297 year laemous, with people who loved her suffering from addiction and the extreme and demanding encroachment of the media that ultimately contributed to her death in 27, from alcohol poisoning in the summer of 2011.

The film ‘Back to Black” highlights the extent of the years between the 2003 successful breakthrough frank and the highlighting of the album title in 2006. But if you think that you will find out who is really in the picture – who is a person Amy or at least who is a musician Amy, you are not in for pleasant surprises.

In the film written by Matt Greenhalgh, Taylor-Johnson portrays an Amy who is an addict and as such, using the title “Back to black” one can only describe this biopic genre as characterization gone sour and damned.

There’s an assumption that can be made in any whether it be a singer’s or a musician’s biographical drama or any film and that is there is going to be a lot of music inside and out. Despite the inclusion of performances of a number of songs that are probably some of the most famous of Amy’s, “Back to Black” does pretty much the same – the songs are more often than not relegated to just being a mere backdrop and pity dummy than an integral part of the actual drama.

It is almost as if they were in a hurry to remind everyone that Amy was a performer too and not just an emotional basket case that they portray her to be.

The closest it comes to it is chronicling the painful process of creating ‘backs to black’ for a few episodes of the show. We get these little bits and pieces that even her base story was partly that of a pop mage, a guitar lying next to her bed and that she wrote some words in the midst of a pretty Ryan Ronson.

Back to Black interprets and therefore distorts, on some level, the meaning and import of Amy. The film does not allow outsiders to access her icon status. It does not present the fans’ crazy rush from her city and the country, the way they stood beside her, or the way her stardom moved over to America.

It does not include any of the reasons why it was treatable to be so much an Amy and an Amy’s music fan. Very few bits and pieces of what comprised her work are dealt with in the film. Rather, it comes across more as a collage of the messy love affair, strung out, and homemade tattoos.

The performance scenes are, for the most part, there to highlight some of her struggles with staying sober or feelings of melancholy she has towards her on and off boyfriend and later husband Blake (Jack O’Connell).

The solitary snippet of how Back to Black was created that we are presented with is of her sobbing in the studio, recording Back to Black, saying “he’s killed me,” before hard cutting to a point in the timeline when Amy is 100% addicted to drugs.

Even her drug addiction, which is the film’s ill-conceived but main concern, does not get any well-structured exposition, it is just something that occurs off screen. Ad it is finally shown to us, it is done with cut to the nice and most rapid manner, because, the way the film is, we know it comes now or later anyway.

Abela puts in a good effort in her portrayal of Amy, so she is not particularly rigid, attempting to replicate some of Amy’s behaviors and movements on stage.

Gesture is not essence, but there is always an explanation for her representation. Carriers of Amy Winehouse’s charisma and mystique were her charm, almost comparable to her voice, while Abela’s empty imitation and over-the-top accent where well wide of the mark.

While the self-indulgent approach to the subject of drugs as the only way to define Amy seemed quite offensive, it could have been forgiven if the script at least pretended that these internal battles would not end up with this predetermined persecution.

Every time there is a predicted movement towards reaching out for a beer or a glass of wine is staged as an inviting wink to what the audience knows in advance is in store. From the start of the film, Amy is typecast as this flirtatious and brazen silver-tongued sinner who dabbles in other people’s love lives and ends up being a tragic character in her own romance.

To Blake, she is depicted as a victim caught up in the whirlwind of her own uncontrollable inner fury, and to her father, an impotent dreamer, even though ordinary history says differently. None of these men is entirely at fault, but effacing their enabling and exacerbating factors with regard to the vulnerabilities of Amy is a failure in respecting the dignity of history.

Amy appears as a disorganized and impressionable individual yet the music has never been the story. Thus, the question arises that what was the purpose of making this movie?

In 2024 when we try to focus on the historical aspect of pop culture, especially viewing the media and the public treatment of Amy, the appropriation raises frustration. We defend her with a comparison to Britney and promise better. While the appreciative spirit is valid and would help preserve Winehouse’s narrative after her death, this particular expectation prepares the viewer for disappointment.

It still does not do any different as Taylor-Johnson shoots sequences that mock the intrusive paps who follow Amy all day long. This story is permeated with an enormous degree of romanticization and infantilization which has poured out any single spark of life out of this story.

The same sensationalist treatment she tries to mock is what she tells in the story she asks to be sold. I do not think Taylor-Johnson’s voyeuristic and predatory perspective ever fails to exploit the dilemmas of Amy’s addiction without any care whatsoever. Music is presented merely as a sideffect of wanting drama and making bad decisions and the central character is shown to be a pathetic figure.

The narrative of “Back to Black” bones out its subject, elevating the human being to a martyr status while reducing her achievements and the songs to drama after drama of boozing and unrequited love central to any rom com.

It brutally takes away her will and sentiment, making her just a sad character who has an outstanding record. The facts of Amy’s biography cannot be disentangled from her addiction; however, to bring it that nearly all aspects center around the disease and ignore the person and most important accomplishments of her life is archaeological reductionism ugly story every day.

People do not wish to offend her who adores Amy, as this film is incredibly painful, realistically inconvenient and very sad without her or any of the genuine people who loved her.

For that truly cherished people who are missing her able to feel only the destruction this even might lead to. The beginning and the end of the movie-‘Back to Black’ are much the same because Amy says the same thing at both the beginning and the end of the movie, ‘I would want to be remembered as a singer.

I would want to be remembered for my voice” Even so, the picture doesn’t immerse atypical-fawn- attention outside of her despondent emotions-stated after her death, how unfortunate such a thing would be becoming for many after watching this.

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