An old biscuit tin is filled with nostalgic family photos and the bubble writing of a young Amy Winehouse. “Can I borrow your memory box?” she asks her grandmother, Cynthia, who replies, “Only if you look after it.”
Amy, played by Marisa Abela in Back to Black, is grateful for the trove given to her by her “style icon… everything icon” nan. Cynthia (Lesley Manville), a former singer herself, all gold and bold prints, tasks Amy with preserving the family legacy. And in a scene full of foreshadowing—red wine, overindulgence in cake followed by a trip to the restroom, a moment with a literal caged bird—the memory box symbolizes this film’s intention: to preserve the legacy of Amy, the legendary jazz singer who mesmerized the world while under the tabloid media’s harsh spotlight.
It’s a tall order for writer Matt Greenhalgh—who is perhaps, at this point, best known for coining the “I ain’t no Spice Girl” line—and Sam Taylor-Johnson, the director. How could they memorialize someone whose much-documented life is so memorable today, so accessible online? Whose story was so well told in Asif Kapadia’s documentary Amy? How to do Amy, whose unguarded nature has previously been so preyed upon, some justice?
Well, Back to Black ticks off, in that first scene alone, the broad themes of Amy’s life: her working-class Jewish roots, her closeness to her fractured family, her eating disorder. It then shows her rise to fame, her ability to sing the truth but not always to see it when her own addictions—to booze, to drugs, to on-off lover Blake Fielder-Civil—became glaringly clear.
Along the way, Back to Black makes mistakes. There’s Amy’s vintage wardrobe, here resembling just-new bits; and the absurdity of glamorous Cynthia walking across the sodden muddy grass of Hampstead Heath (the shoes!). There’s Blake (Jack O’Connell) as a mystic poet; Mitch (Eddie Marsan), Amy’s dad, devoid of his trademark brashness; and Janis (Juliet Cowan), Amy’s mother, apparently an absent naif.
As for Amy herself, it’s bizarre that we see her supposed desperation to become a mother, but never once get sight of her applying her legendary perfectionism to her work. Her classic hits, all played, are presented as if her talent was in feeling rather than crafting. She’s consistently alone, with no after-parties accompanied by all of Camden’s assorted ghouls, hangers-on, and enablers in tow. Did they not have the guts to expose those leeches in all their glory?
Abela had an unenviable task: to embody someone with a unique fierceness and a still-besotted fanbase. But she inhabits Amy’s physicality well, and when we snap to her post-heartbreak—yellow-gray, gaunt, and desperate for booze—it’s a palpably tragic shift, one that doesn’t need the film’s frequent pan flutes to indicate she’s careered yet another few rungs downwards. Abela’s singing voice is remarkably similar to Amy’s at many points. In general, though, she speaks with a light breathiness rather than Amy’s more guttural, lispy delivery. Abela’s plaintive demeanor and wide, open face makes for a much more vulnerable and softer Amy.
This polishing continues, so we don’t see why Amy had to video call her way into the Grammys—the alleged assault of a fan—or her inserting “Blakey my fella” into a live charity cover of “Free Nelson Mandela.” We also don’t see her handing cups of tea to the paparazzi or singing a racist chant while high on crack. That’d be too complicated, too unforgivable, and too Amy. We even have an early boyfriend (strangely not ginger, like his real-life counterpart), and Blake quizzing her on the more offensive lines in her music: references to “ladyboys” in “Stronger Than Me”; the anti-woman pillorying of wannabe footballers’ wives in “Fuck Me Pumps.”
It’s a passable film, and tells a story, but I wonder what new angle it offers. Is its purpose to give the men in Amy’s life an easy ride? Or is it to tell the story of a gentler, more amenable Amy, one who might more easily garner the sympathies of those who still don’t “get” her? Those who, perhaps, aren’t worth winning over. Maybe it’s just there to exploit her, to repeat what the tabloids did, and make some money from a bit of distress in a dress.
I have no idea. What’s clear, however, is—regardless of all the filmmakers’ intentions—the people receiving the punishment are not the man who wrote it, nor the two actors who make Amy’s difficult male relatives seem like pussycats. Nope: it’s the women involved, it seems, who are at fault.
In one of Back to Black’s more astute moments, Amy offers insight into the photographers hounding her—after all, she did initially work as a celebrity reporter—as she remarks to Blake: “I’m a free breakfast, lunch, and dinner for these cunts.” Their motivation to chase and goad her is clear: money from the papers who get many pennies from the public. She doesn’t get so far as calling out the misogyny that drove them, but perhaps that’s clear to see—all these men crowding her ever-shrinking frame, treading all over her lost pink ballet pump.
Just before Amy died, Britain’s salacious News of the World tabloid was shut down, ushering in refreshed privacy laws and higher standards for the media that could have changed her life. But the legacy of nasty speculation and intrusion into privacy, the acts that made all of the cracks in Amy’s existence that much deeper, lives on in that great, big digital memory box: social media.
As I scroll through comments under posts about Back to Black, I wonder: what’s the goal of the members of the public who concoct online conspiracy theories about Sam Taylor-Johnson’s marriage to Aaron Taylor-Johnson? Whatever you think of the iffy-at-best fact they started dating when he was 19 and she 43, does calling her a “granny,” “pedo,” or “groomer” improve anything? What’s the ambition of someone who decides to tell Abela how “awful” she is, or how “delusional” she must be for taking on the role?
Perhaps these people want to counter this huge production that was perhaps hubristic in expecting to capture the true essence of Amy. But does spitefulness really work? Some might write it all off as the work of horrid corners of silly platforms, but these plentiful comments are the embers of a hellfire that indelibly scalded Amy. She died of alcohol poisoning, aged just 27, and her brother Alex says the bulimia that ravaged her health was a contributing factor. No pap poured Amy her last drink. Yet, could she have had better access to support had the press backed off? Given her space instead of scrutiny? I think of Cara Delevingne, whose rock-bottom was depicted by the press with at least pretend concern before she was torn apart by the public. Certain people, who think they’re better than the press, continue to carry its baton of loathing.
It makes me wonder how Amy would have been treated today. Yes, some things have moved on. However, I can imagine a younger version of her being ridiculed as an industry plant, or a cultural appropriator worthy of full cancellation. Had she survived her addiction—and, in embracing recovery, chosen a more gentle, wholesome way of life—would she have been written off as cheugy, a hun, a toxic girl boss, irrelevant?
We can be fans of Amy—the real Amy, who was full of wit, grit, full-throated determination, and tough plain-speaking—and be critical of a film that doesn’t represent her as we remember her. But maybe the most Amy-like-without-trying virtue Back to Black has demonstrated is in showing us the legacy of hatred towards women who don’t do what other people want them to do.