Love is on the mind, and it is the only thing that Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “Back to Black” biopic wants the audience to ponder while witnessing Amy Winehouse’s odyssey. Taylor-Johnson’s biopic about the legendary jazz singer effectively portrays Winehouse as a being of love, both familial and romantic. As the film streams through its two-hour runtime, Winehouse becomes memorialized as a woman whose life was less so defined by what she created, than what she was bound to. The film wishes to build something pure and loving out of Winehouse’s memory, but it ends up a lot less interesting than the music those memories inspired.
The biopic has been hotly contested, particularly concerning its spectrum of authenticity and general purpose. Do we aim to sensationalize the tragedies of these celebrities’ lives? Or is it that we want to contextualize the art that has become the lifestream of our ears? For as vibrant a person as Winehouse was, one would expect the film to be a bit more outlandish, yet Taylor-Johnson is committed to locking down the songstress’ life as completely clinical.
Winehouse was unmistakably British in spirit, and some of that cultural identity bleeds through in the various pubs and the overcast English skies. Yet the film is shot through dreary lighting that lends a macabre feel to the piece, even as she supposedly lives her best life. The film wears an intense digital sheen that feels all too common and clean these days, and in doing so, seems no different than “Bohemian Rhapsody” or that Bob Marley biopic whose trailer we were tormented by for months on end. In the dimly lit corridors and alleys of London, the film narrows its focus on the turbulent period of Winehouse’s marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil. Within that relationship, Winehouse expresses a desire to “focus on living life” rather than on songwriting itself, for what is art without life? Winehouse most certainly sings a fair bit, but on the whole, the music feels negligible. It serves as the auditory backbone of her life, but the film never once indicates that Winehouse cares much for the musical process.
“Back to Black” has lofty ambitions for how many facets of Winehouse’s life it wishes to capture. In painting these strokes, the film spreads its interests too thinly — attempting to navigate drug addiction, broken family dynamics, Jewishness, feminism, motherhood, fame, death, and marriage, all in one package. The execution of these interests rarely intersect, so there’s little confusion. However, as the film reaches each cornerstone of Winehouse’s life — which feels surprisingly quiet — there’s little to no conviction from Winehouse about her deeper beliefs. This is not because it is too much to explore within one runtime, but because the film posits these questions of self-reflection, then crumbles as it cowers in fear from the confrontation of truth. When a film is an estate-sanctioned biopic, one shouldn’t be disappointed when the film lacks the integrity to carry us through the depth of the artist’s soul, flaws and all.
Taylor-Johnson frames the love story as a naive fairytale, as Winehouse and Fielder-Civil’s connection is built over a singular montage that holds very little physical intimacy and emotional chemistry. Yet, it’s extremely apparent how little Taylor-Johnson and company seem to care for anyone other than Winehouse and her ex-husband. Winehouse’s father disapproves of the marriage, but besides one outburst, he does not press any further. Winehouse’s grandmother’s passing, and the ensuing grief, feel like overhead costs to the main operation. There’s so much talk about substance abuse and the struggles Winehouse and Fielder-Civil go through, but all it amounts to is a sniff of cocaine and some boorish-looking Brits. It’s not healthy to wallow in the miserablism that something like the Marilyn Monroe biopic “Blonde” gives in to, yet to extract empathy out of suffering through time-economizing film techniques (which ultimately reduce Winehouse’s trials into nothing) is maddening. And all that’s left in the wake of her extraction is love.
Towards the end of this story, it becomes clear that Taylor-Johnson and the estate wish to pivot Winehouse’s story to a Greek tragedy of heartbreak, that ultimately results in her tragic passing. Combined with the complete gloss-over of Winehouse’s more apparent problems, the film makes a parable out of her life, insinuating that many of the problems contributing to her death are simply heartache. This loss of autonomy in the rewrite of Winehouse’s legacy as a lover-girl who only spoke from tragedy feels deftly irresponsible; Winehouse was writing and loving music far before the sadness of being an adult befell her. Worst of all the biopic feels demystifying in all the most shallow ways, filling in the major events but without the interiority or feeling that comes with the heart of the songs we love.
Famed film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel once hotly debated the Doors biopic in 1991, in which Ebert criticized Siskel’s logic that the music kept him entertained. If Siskel enjoyed The Doors’ music so much, why not go and purchase the CD and enjoy rather than put himself through the misery of the film? Art is inherently more exciting than the life from which the art came; in a musical biopic like “Back to Black,” if that art is barely present and poorly contextualized, wouldn’t we just want to listen to the “Back to Black” album instead? Perhaps this film will disappear from the consciousness of the average person because we’ve had a while to remember and love Winehouse’s music and what she has given us. I’ll still be smiling to “Tears Dry on Their Own” even years from now because I and so many others have cherished “Valerie” and “Love is a Losing Game” for so long. How would this film change any of our love for her?
Image courtesy of The Times
