For as much as has been said about director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black—it’s exploitative, it’s too tame, the on-set photos captured during filming were already disgracing its subject’s legacy—there is ironically not much to harp on about Johnson’s film at all. It’s not because Back to Black is surprisingly great or woefully awful, but because it lands firmly in the middle, struggling to say much about the iconic late singer that hasn’t already been mused on by her millions of fans.
In the nearly 13 years since Winehouse’s untimely passing from alcohol poisoning in July 2011, her devoted admirers have remained steadfast. Reviews of the crooner’s posthumous demos and rarities album, 2011’s Lioness: Hidden Treasures, decried the record as a cash grab, with proceeds going to Winehouse’s questionable estate. (Her wealth and legacy are controlled by Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s father, who fans felt was largely responsible for enabling Winehouse’s addictions.) Just two years ago, Neil Patrick Harris was slammed online after photos resurfaced from a 2011 Halloween party where the actor commissioned a meatloaf to look like Winehouse’s corpse.
Johnson and Back to Black’s writer Matt Greenhalgh surely knew they were facing a tough road to the film’s release—especially since the eponymous documentary made about Winehouse’s life, Amy, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2016. Why, then, they chose to pursue this unpointed and largely ineffective biopic is a mystery; Johnson’s claims about wanting to tell Winehouse’s story through her music don’t help clarify things. While those songs enhance the movie’s thin screenplay, they were pre-existing works, already telling mythic stories of their writer’s life through her wit and heartbreaking candor. Replicating that personality onscreen is another matter entirely. Though the film’s star, Marisa Abela, is visibly dedicated to getting the role right, Winehouse’s shining supernova proves too bright to simulate, causing Back to Black to stay shrouded in darkness for far too long.
