Back to Black review – a point­less­ly cru­el hash of Amy’s life

Since Bohemi­an Rhap­sody took home four Acad­e­my Awards in 2019, it feels as if music biopics have been com­ing down the slop chute thick and fast, with debates around their ethics, imper­son­ations and omis­sions becom­ing ever more tedious. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Wine­house biopic, Back to Black, might just be the defin­ing stench ema­nat­ing from the pail.

Indus­try alum Marisa Abela has the mam­moth task of play­ing Amy, an idol still fresh in the mem­o­ry of the movie-going pop­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, due to the vapid and cru­el script by Matthew Green­hal­gh (Nowhere Boy, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liv­er­pool), Abela’s pri­ma­ry expres­sions flit between that of a lovestruck teenag­er and a brat­ty, defi­ant one – with­out the sto­ry ever real­ly acknowl­edg­ing the tragedy and exploita­tion of Amy’s youth.

Abela takes the risk of singing in the film, and her imper­son­ation is pass­able, with the musi­cal inter­ludes offer­ing a brief reprieve from her dis­tract­ing­ly over­pro­nounced and uncom­fort­able North Lon­don accent, com­plete with facial con­tor­tions. That being said, con­sid­er­ing the film’s many crimes, Abela’s per­for­mance comes off as some­thing of a sav­ing grace.

The film spans just under a decade of Amy’s short life, from rough­ly 18 years old as she works on her debut album Frank, until her pre­ma­ture death at 27. For such an unfor­tu­nate­ly short peri­od, it’s a mir­a­cle Tay­lor-John­son and her col­lab­o­ra­tors man­aged to reduce her sig­nif­i­cant life to even less.

As this film tells it, Amy Wine­house was noth­ing more than a friend­less addict and tabloid joke, des­per­ate­ly fol­low­ing around a hap­less los­er (Blake Field­er-Civ­il, played by Jack O’Connell) who drove her to sui­cide when he moved on and had a child with anoth­er woman. In one scene, she runs from her grandmother’s grave to meet her ex at the pub. Runs.

What claims to be the sto­ry of the album ​‘Back to Black’ is ulti­mate­ly the sto­ry of Amy & Blake, too tepid to be com­pared to Sid & Nan­cy, too self-con­scious to be com­pared to Pam & Tom­my. Their rela­tion­ship is briefly book­end­ed by the suc­cess of Frank and the peri­od of sobri­ety before Amy’s death (there is no inclu­sion of the Lioness album or the Tony Ben­nett col­lab­o­ra­tion hint­ed at in this very film). The man­ner in which it is depict­ed is Vase­line-lensed and monot­o­nous, with their extend­ed meet­ing in a pub depict­ing Blake intro­duc­ing Amy to the Shangri-La’s on the juke­box and thus find­ing her sound for the epony­mous album.

As well as cred­it­ing Blake with find­ing Amy’s sound, Tay­lor-John­son also goes out of her way to depict Amy’s first time try­ing hard drugs as an occa­sion when she’s alone. Back to Black is an excel­lent ali­bi for those in Amy’s life who preyed upon her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and ben­e­fit­ted from her being over­worked and exploited.

But strange­ly for a music biopic, there is no sense of star­dom here, with Amy’s charm, wit, and her inabil­i­ty to suf­fer fools glad­ly all zapped from this depic­tion. Her col­lab­o­ra­tors, most notably Mark Ron­son, are prac­ti­cal­ly nonex­is­tent, and the (already well-doc­u­ment­ed) inva­sion of paparazzi who tor­ment­ed her remorse­less­ly feels dis­con­nect­ed from any music suc­cess because the film has no real inter­est in Amy’s artis­tic process or inspiration.

As much as the par­ty line insists this film is a cel­e­bra­tion of Amy’s musi­cal genius, it is as sala­cious and cru­el as any tabloid cut­ting from the noughties – only invest­ed in the bloody bal­let pump left in the street, not the com­plex­i­ties of liv­ing a very pub­lic life with addiction.

Amy’s love of jazz and bee­hive hair­dos are inher­it­ed from her nan Cyn­thia Wine­house – a phoned-in stock per­for­mance from the usu­al­ly excel­lent Les­ley Manville – whose death is a cat­a­lyst for a lot of Amy’s pub­lic grief, not that the film­mak­ers are inter­est­ed in explor­ing that grief with any nuance. The rest of the cast, includ­ing O’Connell and Eddie Marsan as her appar­ent super­dad Mitch Wine­house, turn in per­for­mances that are as unin­spired and cheap as the script, while Nick Cave and War­ren Ellis’ score adds an aggra­vat­ing wist­ful­ness to the dire scene.

Bizarre revi­sions are lit­tered through­out the film, includ­ing the omis­sion of the ​“For my Blake, my Blake incar­cer­at­ed” line in her icon­ic Gram­my accep­tance speech, which is oth­er­wise depict­ed word for word, as is her full Glas­ton­bury per­for­mance where her ren­di­tion of ​‘Me & Mr Jones’ becomes Me & Blake again – only in the film she doesn’t phys­i­cal­ly lash out at a fan. While it’s best this par­tic­u­lar­ly fraught moment of Amy’s career was not relit for the big screen, it’s con­fus­ing that Tay­lor-John­son has no issue with recre­at­ing, beat for beat, some of the more des­per­ate tabloid images of Amy’s career, yet draws the line at cor­rect­ly depict­ing eas­i­ly search­able performances.

Amy Wine­house ​“ain’t no Spice Girl,” and no one can make her ​“do some­thing she don’t wan­na to do,” Abela squawks repeat­ed­ly through­out the film. But these aren’t cries for help from a lost young woman, as the film tells it this is the ethos of a pow­er­house who was the unstop­pable archi­tect of her own mis­for­tune. ​“Our hands are clean,” the film seems to cry, ​“All we did was watch!”

Tay­lor-John­son has gone on record say­ing the fam­i­ly had no input in the sto­ry and she was unable to meet with Blake pri­or to film­ing, as though that gives her project some kind of cre­dence. What it real­ly does is high­light how undu­ly cru­el it is towards the young woman it claims to com­mem­o­rate. If the Back to Black team were an estate mouth­piece their lib­er­ties would at least be explainable.

Even on the most basic lev­el, noth­ing new can be gleaned about Amy through this film, it’s about as insight­ful as ask­ing your old­est rel­a­tive what they remem­ber about her. The worst part is, unlike Blonde or Spencer, Back to Black isn’t designed to be divi­sive. This is a sin­cere attempt at memo­ri­al­is­ing Wine­house in an acces­si­ble, main­stream biopic, and its point­less cru­el­ty is nau­se­at­ing, no mat­ter how unwit­ting it may be. Amy’s art has always been her best rep­re­sen­ta­tive. If you wish to know about the pain she felt and to wit­ness her tal­ent as a musi­cian, lis­ten to the album. This film is irredeemable.