Back to Black, the 2024 Amy Winehouse biopic that has been out for some time now. I'm not the biggest Amy Winehouse fan out there but my wife knows and likes her music so she have been bugging me to watch it for months already jajaja and she is into sharing content with me when ever we have time, its just that I watch way more content than her but we finally sat down on past Monday night and looked at it since I was in this marathon of watching content, it was a holiday and we decided to stay home, and I have to say it was an interesting experience, personally I cant say more than that so it was Ok. Biopics are a tricky beast and this is something I have mention multiple times, so let me start by saying that...again. They aren’t easy to get right and they often leave die hard fans feeling a bit let down, so I went into this one with an open mind, with the idea of learning a bit more about Winehouse's life story, and I was entertain to be honest.
Rottentomatoes Rating
The movie begins when Amy was a young, ambitious singer in North London, dreaming of becoming a star, with her singing in her bedroom, writing her lyrics, be a typical teenager with extraordinary talent to then straight up into the journey of her rise to fame, her tumultuous relationship with Blake Fielder Civil and her battle with addiction. The first thing that hit me was how fast the movie was, felt really rush and this is a key aspects with Biopics, knowing what is important and whats not to keep the viewers entertain but not rushing through the pace of the movie, it’s like we go from Amy being an unknown to a chart topping superstar, one minute she is singing in local pubs and the next she is winning Grammys, I can understand that they had a lot to cover and it did move a bit fast at times.
Her romantic relationship was describe as a mess, it went zero to a hundred real quick!, they meet, fall head over heels, break up, get back together, get married and basically destroy each other. The problem is that it's intense stuff and you can't help but feel for Amy, as she spirals deeper and deeper into addiction and heartbreak.
Marisa Abela play the role of Amy, kills it, nail it to the wall, not knowing she even does her own singing, she's got the look and the flow, almost like a clone of Amy, well I might be exaggerating as I don't know much about Amy but I love Marisa acting. After watching the movie my wife had me listen to "Rehab" and Marisa's voice was very close although not carbon copy, but it is very impressive nonetheless. I remember one scene where she’s writing the song Back to Black in her bedroom and it is a raw and powerful scene, there were times you could feel the pain that drove her music, reasons why I feel that as a movie to mainly entertain its a good one, but then Biopic right?!.
Jack O'Connell plays the role of Blake and he does a decent job of making you like him but mostly hate him, you have to feel for Amy, you can see why Amy was attracted to him, charismatic guy and charming I would say, but there are times you want to shake some sense into both of them to just STOP the madness.
Latter on one aspect my wife mention to me is that they never really got into some of her darkest part of her life, for example she had bulimia, but it's not really brought up and I told her that the movie is mostly about her music and romantic life, we already know it was a destructive relationship and that to keep things in the entertaining side of things, negative aspects of the character might be left out. We see her drinking and doing drugs but still in that margin of not trying to shame the character for her decisions although like the classic "dont do drug kids" look at what can happen, so I do understand they probably didn't want to make it too heavy, but to fans who knew this dark times of her life might be shocking the movie starts to paint Amy picture way different than it was, to be honest this movie also could be just a PR move to keep her music alive, after all its entertainment and from time to time there are dead artist who still push out records, not saying this is the case, but what if?!, just saying. After all I ended up getting into Amy's story, it is so tragically beautiful to see this incredibly talented woman pour her heart and soul into her music as her personal life is coming to an end, the scenes in which she performs are really powerful, you can really feel the emotion in her songs.
Close to the end, Amy says goodbye to her dad and moves into a new house, at least in the movie. Sober and divorced from Blake, she seems to be doing better, but its like the damage to her image is already done with too much controversy, everything in life has consequences, she gets bombarded by paparazzi asking questions about Blake having a baby with someone else as she leaves, probably a gut punch and I could see and image how awkward and probably painful that could be when you just want to move on and have the nightmare to be over.
In the final scene Amy goes back inside, grabs a bottle of alcohol, and sings "Tears Dry on Their Own" as she walks up the stairs to her empty room. Knowing what we know of what would happen to her, it's a devastating moment. I like that the movie doesn’t show her death, which I think was a good call, but it ends with some text stating that she died at 27 from alcohol poisoning, I could only imagine how much you have to drink for this to happen and painful the process must be, at some point in life no matter who you are you will feel your body degrading down as every day you keep drinking organs start to get hammer down.
The ending does captures the loneliness and the struggle of addiction and how temptation still is around the corner even when things are a bit brighter. For someone like Amy, who lived her life in the public eye and had no escape from the constant scrutiny and pressure, it was constant haunting.
I thought that overall 'Back to Black' was a solid, if sanitized look at Amy Winehouse's life, very well tame down to stay in the commercial side of the business. It’s not perfect by any means and I can see how part of the audience is going to have some issues with it. If you're going in with, literally, no background on Amy's story, I found that engaging and emotionally impactful. Important key aspect is that the movie does make justice to her talent in music and her burning desire and passion that moves her, but at the same time I kind of felt like there should have been more to Amy’s story that we weren’t seeing. It also seems like a missed opportunity to really see her friendships, or her relationship with her band members.
The concert scenes were well done and the recreation of early 2000 London felt very British as they should. Obviously, the soundtrack is killer, so even if you're not a big fan of Amy Winehouse it's hard not to be sucked into the strength of her music. Would I recommend "Back to Black? Yeah, I think I would, its a movie that bring out lots of emotions and that's big part of been entertain, it’s not a perfect movie and you’re certainly not going to get a deep dive into the nitty gritty details of Amy’s life. In my opinion this is a solid 7 out of 10, it’s not going to blow your mind, but it’s well acted, emotionally engaging and you’ll probably want to listen to some Amy Winehouse albums afterwards and as I mention before, probably the main point of this movie, keep her music alive.
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