Back to Black Review

Well this movie was a suspiciously low-key release. We had the poster for a while, but I think I only saw the trailer once and a half. I don't know whether to be surprised or not, since I know the name Amy Winehouse but I couldn't name a single song she's done. When I came out, I had only heard that the reviews were bad. Nothing else.

What's the Movie About?

Uh... I'm not sure. It's either a cautionary tale about addiction, a story of a doomed romance, or the origin story of one woman's tattoos. All I can really say for certain is that this is movie is about Amy Winehouse. 

What I Like.

The music is good, but that seems hardly worth mentioning. I liked Amy's Nan. We don't see much of her but they make it clear that she's a major inspiration to Amy and their last conversation was sweet.

What I Didn't Like.

Jesus Christ, I don't know what happened to this movie. It seemingly starts in the middle of the story, as it wraps up plot threads that I guess we were just supposed to know about? I also couldn't tell how old Amy was at any given time. She starts out eighteen at the beginning, and I'm 97% sure the movie takes place in linear order, but the structure of the film is just so bad I could not tell. This movie has a weird message. I think. I think it's about substance abuse, but also about the corruption of fame, or maybe it's about young people doing stupid things? Yet throughout it all, it really wants to absolve Amy Winehouse of all guilt for her circumstances. The boy she's obsessed with (who's the guy from her song Back To Black, the movie informs us) is concerned about the toxicity of their relationship. WHICH HE'S ABSOLUTELY RIGHT TO. Not only does the movie tell us that the two lovers feed into their absolute impulses, but Amy Winehouse is physically abusive to him. Yet the movie has the guy wanting a divorce as the movie's darkest hour. And they imply the fact that he's moved on and turned his life around as the catalyst of AMY'S SUICIDE. That's a big yikes. If you read closer to the sentence four back, you'll notice I said the movie tells us about their mutually destructive relationship. That's because they didn't show it. Most of this movie is tell-don't-show. This makes the tone wildly inconsistent. In this movie, Amy tells her Nan that she's in love, then her Nan tells her that she has lung cancer. This causes Amy to run off to her true love and make outs with him. I mean, that's probably not what the writer intended, but that's how it plays out in the movie. My final criticism is that this movie never ends. I thought the movie was about to wrap up twenty times throughout. Like half the scene felt like scenes to end on, y'know? It made it an incredibly tough watch, I was literally checking the time every 3 or so minutes in the last half hour. Let me put it this way, literally half the theater I was in walked out of the movie before the movie ended. 

Final Summation.

This movie is shockingly bad. The best thing I can say about it is that it does feel like an earnest attempt at making a movie about Amy Winehouse, but boy howdy did they do it wrong. The longer I think about it, the more this movie makes me sad. I can't prove it, but it just feels like some creative force behind this movie tried their best and it either wasn't good enough, or else forced them to change it for the worse. I can't even recommend it as a curiosity really, as it is incredibly frustrating to sit down and actually watch.

There's a lot of similarities to One Love, the Bob Marley biopic that came out in February. But One Love felt like some one was under the influence while structuring the movie, and whoever made this movie was clearly very sober. And while I can't say that Back To Black is better than it, I did learn more in this movie than I did in One Love. So I guess it gets one point for that?

Y'know what, fuck this downer final section. I hope this becomes a thing this year. I'd like two or three more musician biopics that are completely incomprehensible. Yeah. I said it. Let's make it this year's theme. Hell, I'll even rank them at the end of the year. That's a promise!

[Edit: I learned more about the making of this movie. Apparently the director is a bad person, possible abusive, almost definitely pedophilic, and not only didn't seek out permission from Amy Winehouse's estate to make this movie, but ignored the family's objections to the movie as a whole. With that context, the creeper aspects of the movie make a whole lot more sense. Why does the movie frame Amy's husband wanting a divorce because she's abusive as a tragedy? Because the director the movie doesn't think that domestic abuse is a bad thing. Frankly, the bigger deal to me is the fact that the family objected to the making of the movie. Obviously the other stuff is worse if it's true, but I don't know if any of it is confirmed. And I cannot bring myself to research any further, celebrity culture and obsession over famous people is a pit of which there is almost no return. Besides, I don't want to turn this blog into a drama blog. That sounds massively exhausting. The whole of this section is really just to reiterate: Don't watch this movie. It's bad.]