A tale mistold
What the controversial Amy Winehouse film gets wrong about the late singer and why it matters
“I just want people to hear my voice and forget their troubles for five minutes.” These are the first words spoken by Amy Winehouse, played by actor Marisa Abela, in “Back to Black,” the new biopic about the British singer-songwriter. It’s an interesting opener considering that when Winehouse died in July 2011, from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, she was as known for her troubles as she was for her talents.
In January 2023, photos from the film’s set were released, showing Abela sporting Winehouse’s trademark beehive and winged eyeliner, but appearing dishevelled and distraught, creating the impression that the film would focus only on the tabloid aspects of the singer’s life, including her struggles with addiction, mental health issues and dysfunctional relationships.
Many on social media immediately expressed concern, with some calling for a boycott of the film.
The timing of a Winehouse movie makes sense. The cultural reckoning of #MeToo has resulted in a re-examination of how female celebrities were exploited, especially in the late 1990s and 2000s. Young women like Winehouse, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears were reduced to caricatures, punchlines and tabloid casualties, and “Back to Black” joins a long line of redemption efforts.
Yet musical biopics are challenging to make. There are families, surviving bandmates and estates to please, not to mention fans who rarely think the portrayal they see onscreen matches the one in their hearts or heads.
As difficult as they are, biopics can also be big business. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the 2018 film about Freddie Mercury, broke
box office records and earned Rami Malek an Oscar for his portrayal of the late Queen singer. It ushered in a wave of biopics about Elton John, Elvis, Bob Marley and Aretha Franklin. Coming soon to a multiplex near you: the stories of Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen and even Air Supply.
It can be hard to condense a person’s life into a two-hour popcorn flick. Biopics often reposition narratives, rewrite history and skip over accomplishments in favour of more scandalous details, especially when the film’s subject is a woman.
In 2022’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” major moments in Whitney Houston’s life were so rushed the film felt like nothing more than a live performance of the singer’s Wikipedia page. This “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” approach to storytelling reduces a woman’s life to a series of easily digestible scenes and, in the case of “Back to Black,” sound bites. More than once, we hear Winehouse warn her manager and record label, “I ain’t no Spice Girl.”
Women not only get a CliffsNotes version of their lives, they also get inaccuracies. After the release of 1993’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” based on Tina Turner’s autobiography, the singer called out the filmmakers for their creative storytelling. So many details were changed, Turner admitted she never finished watching the film.
“Judy,” the 2019 Renée Zellweger film about the last months of actor and singer Judy Garland, leaned too heavily into the tragic aspects of her life, proving there’s a fine line between authenticity and exploitation. When the biopic formula is success followed by addiction and then redemption, women often miss out on the redemption.
Unfortunately, “Back to Black” includes little about Winehouse’s actual creative process. If you didn’t know anything about her two studio albums (“Frank” and “Back to Black”), her chart-topping singles or her five Grammy wins in 2008, you might get the impression she never achieved the level of fame she did, especially outside the U.K.
Biopics about women often focus on the men in their lives, as if the only way we can understand a woman is through the men who surround her. “Back to Black” doesn’t focus as much on Winehouse’s talent as on her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, who has acknowledged in the press and in the 2015 documentary “Amy” that he introduced her to crack cocaine and heroin. He also offered to sell previously unseen photos of her to the tabloids.
But none of this comes up in the film.
Instead, the two enjoy a Camden pub meet-cute in which he explains the Shangri-Las to her, though it’s hard to believe Winehouse was unfamiliar with the ’60s girl group. Her knowledge of music has been widely documented and having him mansplain a band who influenced her look and sound can’t help but suggest he was responsible for her success.
Fielder-Civil was not the only toxic male in Winehouse’s life; her father Mitch also gets a rewrite in the film.
He objected to his portrayal in “Amy,” even though he is shown bringing a crew to film a newly sober Winehouse in St. Lucia in 2008 for a cash-grab reality show called “My Daughter Amy.” If there’s a redemption arc in “Back to Black,” it’s strictly for the men in Winehouse’s life. Responsibility for the role they played in her downfall is largely absent, which means if viewers are looking for someone to blame, the only one left, unfortunately, is Winehouse herself.
“Everything about Amy was so voyeuristic, that terrible and constant picking apart of her life. I thought it was time to go back to the music. Her lyrics could tell her story,” Sam Taylor-Johnson, the director of “Back to Black,” told USA Today. The problem is, she needed to acknowledge that “terrible and constant picking apart of her life,” and particularly who was doing it, because it’s a major part of Winehouse’s story.
The focus on her songs and her success needs to be there, as do the complexities of living a very public life while struggling with addiction and being relentlessly feasted on by sexist, parasitic paparazzi and tabloid culture. Winehouse was nothing more than a revenue stream for those who prioritized profit over her well-being, as well as a punchline for comedians who mocked her addictions and appearance. “Back to Black” includes the actual voice-over of comedian George Lopez announcing Winehouse’s historic Grammy nominations but cut the clip just before he muttered, “drunk ass.”
There should be the joy, love and lyrics Taylor-Johnson wanted in Winehouse’s tale. The singer deserves that. But in the absence of any analysis of the other complicated parts of her story, what viewers are left with is a one-dimensional portrait of Winehouse that does a complex woman a gross disservice. During her life, Winehouse didn’t want to be mainstream or manufactured, but this film about her is exactly that.
After all, she ain’t no Spice Girl.