May 20, 2024 · Watch the official trailer
Musical biopics are so often about imitation, trying to create a portrait of an artist that is part caricature, part reverence in order to provide some nostalgia for audiences and create a buzz around a film.
It’s a popular subgenre in recent years with films about Queen and Elton John being Oscar-nominated movies as well as upcoming projects in the works about the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson takes a decidedly more muted approach to an introspective look into the life of British pop jazz vocalist Amy Winehouse, chronicling her early career but especially the events around the making of her signature album “Back To Black” prior to her untimely death due to alcohol poisoning at age 27.
The film, which takes its name from the same album it follows, is less homage than portrait of a woman who happens to be in the music industry and how her personal and romantic relationships change and affect the ways she approaches her music.
While other performers might attempt to become Winehouse so thoroughly that it becomes a lesser imitation than intended, “Industry” star Marisa Abela makes the leap to the big screen and seeks to evoke the spirit of Winehouse in a more ethereal way. There is a reserved, subtle, and yet effortless manner to which Abela keeps control over Amy’s emotions as if she’s turned down the volume by 10-15 percent, allowing audiences to lean in and listen closer.
This is also impacted by the considerably unique and inventive choice to allow Abela to record all of Amy’s music in the film herself, rather than dubbing over Winehouse’s vocals into the film. Abela is able to perform individual songs in context with specific emotions tailored to the moments in which they are placed in the film, making some tracks hopeful, poignant or bittersweet based on what Amy is going through in the moment.
The decision of where to place the film’s soundtrack – both in Winehouse’s songs as well as the music that influenced Amy as an artist – is masterfully done by Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh and while the music and theatricality of Winehouse’s life certainly play a major role in “Back To Black,” the narrative drama surrounding Amy in her relationships with her father as well as on-again, off-again, boyfriend turned husband Blake remain the centerpiece of the film.
For his part, “Unbroken” star Jack O’Connell portrays Blake with a careful hand unwilling to make the man who turned Amy onto drugs a villain, showcasing the love that the couple had as being mired in the throes of addiction and their inability to coexist in a healthy way.
Eddie Marsan is also exceptional as Amy’s father Mitch and while the film does not examine the relationship between father and daughter as strongly as it does between Blake and Amy, Marsan and Abela have a wonderful, almost instantaneous familiarity brought out through a mutual love of vintage music that helps to deepen the relationships of the film.
From a structural standpoint, “Back To Black” approaches things chronologically from the early parts of Amy’s career through her Grammy award winning success. However, there is a much more deliberate, subdued, and almost distant way in which Taylor-Johnson approaches this movie that American audiences might be turned off by as opposed to the vibrant, manic chaos of bombastic biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Rocketman” that seek to dazzle viewers with style over substance.
In what will likely be one of the year’s more underseen top films, “Back To Black” pays honor to a musical icon while not shying too much away from the darker elements of her life and makes the film something both cinephiles and ardent fans of Winehouse’s music might want to seek out in theaters.
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