Like many others, when I heard that there was going to be an Amy Winehouse biopic, I was
sceptical about watching it, as someone who grew up in a household that loved listening to
Amy’s music, as well as being a household that mourned her after hearing about her death. As well as this, the film being directed by Sam Taylor Johnson made me sceptical
to watch Back to Black, considering some of her directorial credits, like Fifty Shades of Grey
and A Million Little Pieces, which were not received well by critics. But recently, I finally caved in
after seeing it available to watch on Netflix, especially after hearing such mixed reviews
about the movie.
The film stars Marisa Abela as Amy, which I think was excellent casting. Although Marisa
doesn’t isn’t the spitting image of the singer, she’s able to capture Amy’s facial expressions,
as well as her accent and her singing voice throughout the film. Although Marisa is a very
talented actress, she didn’t necessarily convey the same grit or emotion that Amy naturally
had as a person. I also really appreciated the subtle but very present nods to Amy being
Jewish and her Jewish culture, as well as Marisa Abela herself being Jewish in real life. The
beginning of the film starts off extremely light-hearted, showcasing her family life, and how
Amy’s close friend Tyler hands a demo of Amy singing over to his manager, which then leads
to her contract at Island Records that would then prompt her to release “Frank”, her debut
album.
We then get a leadup of events that cause Amy to release “Back to Black”, one of these
events being Amy meeting Blake Fielder-Civil, played by Jack O’Connell. As well as
highlighting the cute and wholesome moments in their relationship, this is where the
movie’s tone starts to go from being light-hearted to being very emotional and slightly dark;
we learn about Blake’s drug addiction as well as Amy’s struggle with bulimia and alcohol
addiction. After problems with their relationship start to brew, and with Amy finding out
that her grandmother has lung cancer, she is then inspired to write the album “Back to
Black”, the album that would go on to help her win 5 Grammys.
Although it wasn’t necessarily a positive moment in the film, I loved learning some of the
inspiration behind the song “Rehab”. In the film we see that Amy’s father, Mitch (played by
Eddie Marsan) was against sending Amy to rehabilitation when her problems with alcohol
were becoming more prominent. I hadn’t realised until watching the film that the lyric “If
my daddy thinks I’m fine” in the song “Rehab” was a direct nod at the fact that Mitch didn’t
want his daughter to go to rehab for a while. Although this happens, when Blake goes to
prison, he gets clean and wants a fresh start without Amy, which then causes her to go to
rehab.
I think the film had a really abrupt ending, as after Amy is shown walking up the stairs of her
new home, the scene goes black it showed a postscript saying that Amy, after a long period
of sobriety, died from alcohol poisoning. But in a way, I found this to be extremely
sentimental because it was very representative of the abrupt way that Amy died, especially
because of her long period of sobriety. I think the majority of the film shouldn’t have also focused mostly on Amy and Blake’s relationship- I would’ve loved to see more of her iconic
performances being incorporated into the film, or some of her iconic funny interactions with
others.
Contrary to the lack of critical acclaim, I think the film is definitely one of those films where
you’d have to watch it to decide whether you like it or not. There were elements of the film
I enjoyed, but there were also elements of the film that I felt were rushed or
underdeveloped, when they shouldn’t have been, considering the film’s 2-hour runtime. I
would also recommend the film to people who were very big fans of Amy, because I think
the film does take a gentler approach when depicting her, especially because we’ve seen
how brutal the media was to her when she was alive and struggling with addiction. Overall, I
would give this movie 3 ½ stars out of 5.