"Back to Black: The Amy Winehouse Story" trailer/courtesy Tulip Entertainment
In 2007 I was scheduled to fly to Austin, Texas to see Amy Winehouse perform as part of a major music festival. The lineup included several other big names such as Bob Dylan, Arcade Fire, Muse, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, LCD Soundsystem, Crowded House, Bjork and more. Of all the names, I was most excited about the chance to see Amy for the first time, who was supposed to appear on my birthday. More than a month before the festival, Amy had already announced the cancellation of her arrival in the United States due to "clinical exhaustion". I also canceled my arrival. I decided that I would look for another festival where she performs. Unfortunately, the birthday wish of seeing Amy Winehouse didn't come true in the end.
Almost 13 years have passed since her family said Kaddish over her, but it's still hard to write about Amy Winehouse in the past tense. She was too talented, but mostly too young. We attribute romance to the 27 club, but forget how sad it is. What pure beauty of creation the world has missed. Janis Joplin had just reached her artistic peak, Jim Morrison was revealed as a profound poet only after his death, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix could have brought so much more happiness to the world.
Relative to the names mentioned here, Amy's legacy is more limited. She managed to release a total of two studio albums during her lifetime. One of them is perfect from start to finish, the other is damaged and messy, but just as beautiful. Both accurately define the tortured musical soul of the singer. The new movie that was released this weekend - "Back to Black: The Story of Amy Winehouse" - tries to do a favor to this complex character, who has been flattened into a flake. Precisely because the film envelops its main character with great love, it manages to miss the beauty that is found precisely in her flaws.
Not that it's a bad movie per se. The length of the film is two hours and they fly by without paying attention at all. It is related to the beautiful music (not only Amy's) that flows throughout the film, it is necessarily related to the metamorphosis of the actress Marissa Abella, who simply becomes during the film the young Amy Winehouse, with all her faults and virtues. The other actors in the cast also do a good job, sometimes too good. The feeling is sometimes that of watching a well-written play, and not in the real life of a young girl whose fame has hit her too hard.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson ("50 Shades of Grey") made a brave decision when she let Abella herself sing in the film. It's a decision reminiscent of director James Mangold's decision in 2005's Walk My Way, to have Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix sing John and Johnny Cash's songs. A decision that was worth an Oscar for Witherspoon. On the other hand, Rami Malek managed to scoop a golden statuette despite only lip-syncing to Freddie Mercury's original voice in "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 2018.
It is mainly a decision that shapes the entire film, and imposes on Abella a double and almost impossible responsibility. Amy Winehouse's voice, like Freddie Mercury's, was one-off, and the attempt to reproduce it by a human was doomed to failure. But this decision also forces the actress not only to play the character of Amy, but to actually become Amy. Surprisingly, she succeeds. Her singing voice in the film is no less breathtaking. Her acting is brilliant. It's just a shame that the rest of the film doesn't live up to her standard.
Taylor-Johnson avoids presenting the complexity of Amy's character, and instead presents her as a victim of circumstance. The implicit subtext is: she didn't want to be famous, and fame killed her. This is one way of looking at reality, certainly if many other things are ignored. This is also the reason why right at the beginning of the film, Winehouse is presented as a girl who dreams of making music, but not of being famous or rich. The phrase "I don't care about money" is repeated a little too many times in the film, until it loses its meaning.
The film mainly centers on Amy's relationship with her infamous lover Blake Fielder-Sibyl (played by the excellent Jack O'Connell), who becomes the real villain of the film and drags her into experimenting with hard drugs against her will, which ultimately results in her death. She is the good, he is the bad, end of story. But that's a very childish way to look at this relationship (or any relationship), which produced some of Winehouse's musical highlights. It may be that without Blake Amy would still be alive, but it could equally be argued that without Blake she would not have written the music that made her a legend.
The one who comes out very cute in the movie is Winehouse's father, Mitch, who is played by Eddie Marsan, whom we have seen in so many small roles in movies and series (including in the role of Shimon Peres), and as usual he gives an excellent character role. If you have seen all kinds of "exclusive interviews" of the real Mitch with media outlets in Israel in recent weeks, it is related to the fact that he is part of the film's public relations. This is also probably why his character in the film is so positive. One can ask where he was during the time when the whole world saw his daughter dying in front of the paparazzi cameras, but in the film the question is not asked and he is the embracing and compassionate character, who tries to push her to musical success, and does not prevent her from being who she is.
Amy's reality, as already reflected in Asif Kapadia's Oscar-winning documentary "Amy" in 2015, was more difficult. There were performances where she failed to sing and was booed by her audience. Offensive jokes about her addictions and mental state have been an integral part of her life in recent years. All of these are absent from the film, as well as the positive impact she had on hundreds of thousands of fans who saw her as an inspiration to deal with life's difficulties, despite her tragic end.
After Amy's docu won an Oscar in 2015, her father took to social media and attacked the film, which he believed portrayed Amy in a "negative, mean and misleading" way. Mitch also added that he will work to fix it. The new movie currently showing in theaters is the same apparent "correction". The movie is fun and will give you two hours of escape from reality to the most beautiful music there is, but those who really love Amy Winehouse, will love her as she really was, and not as she is presented in the film.