Amy Winehouse is the latest personality in a select and tragic list that includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones. They were all extraordinarily talented musicians. They all led intense lives marked by phenomenal creativity but also personal crises and substance abuse. All died at the age of 27 of lifestyle-related deaths. All left behind millions of grieving fans and musical legacies as sizable as they are focused, leaving us to guess what their careers and music history would have looked like without these tragic early deaths. An acclaimed and award-winning documentary has already been made about Amy Winehouse. Now, director Sam Taylor-Johnson offers us ‘Back to Black‘ – a biopic that proposes a somewhat ‘sweetened’ vision of the singer who not only lived and created intensely, but also never avoided controversy. It is possible that the original screenplay written by Matt Greenhalgh may have sinned in this very way.
The problem with a biography like Amy’s is that most of the viewers were her contemporaries, we each have our own memories of her person and career, and we can’t avoid comparing them to what we see on screen. From the biography of the musician, the script chose the few years between 2002 when she signed the collaboration with ’19 Management’ for her first album and 2008 when at the 50th edition of the Grammy Awards she received five awards in the same night. Connoisseurs will note the absence from Amy’s career story of Mark Ronson, the producer of the blockbuster album that also gives the film its title. From her private life, the focus is on her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil. This is on the one hand presented as the only true love story of Amy’s life. On the other hand, the same relationship is blamed for the singer’s personal crises and heavy drugs addiction. The family also plays an important and largely positive role. Both Amy’s father and grandmother appear as luminouse characters, who support her in her career and try (unsuccessfully) to guide her in her personal life as well.
The writer and the director chose to present a somewhat embellished version of Amy. The final years of the artist’s life, her relapse into alcoholism, the missed concerts and the conflicts with the audiences are omitted. This vision seemed incomplete to me. Could those around her have saved her? Unanswered question. I really enjoyed the recreation of the atmosphere of London clubs and the north of the British capital in the first decade of the century. Marisa Abela‘s performance is overwhelming – she manages to get completely into character and does very well with the music also, coming close in sound but without touching the emotion and quality of the original. Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville play the roles of Amy’s father and grandmother very well. I am not sure whether in real life the family came that close to the ideal, but that’s how it appears to have been in the movie, and the emotion crosses the screen. ‘Back to Black‘ is a film worth seeing for both the music and the story, but viewers should keep in mind that this is still fiction and not an official biography. And now, I’m going to listen to Amy Winehouse – the real one.