Back to Black: Sid and Nancy Redux

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MOVIE INFO:

The extraordinary story of Amy Winehouse’s early rise to fame and the making of her groundbreaking album, Back to Black. Told from Amy’s perspective and inspired by her deeply personal lyrics, the film follows the remarkable woman behind the phenomenon and the tumultuous relationship at the center of one of the most legendary albums of all time.

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REVIEW:

A lot of critics are grousing that Back to Black, the Amy Winehouse biopic, got it wrong by trying to turn her life into a tragic romance.  I was fine with the director, Sam Taylor-Johnson doing that.  It fits most of her songs.  And like it or not, it does center Amy Winehouse in her own perspective as a tragic heroine.  Let the Winehouse documenataries do the deconstruction.  There’s nothing wrong with giving the audience music and romance and a good cry.

The romance between Amy (Marisa Abela in a fully committed performance) and Blake Fiedler-Civil (Jack O’Connell) has a lot of echoes of Sid and Nancy, which charted another codependent and exceptionally toxic relationship between punker icon Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.  The first inspired the titled album that earned Winehouse five Grammies including album of the year.  There is no need to see scenes of her famous songs, Back to Black and Rehab, coming together.  The whole movie does that and is poignantly delineated in the audience’s mind when it’s sung later in the film.  The romance is the reality that is being portrayed so the long initial meet cute between the two in a pub is part of the expectations of the genre.

Like Sid and Nancy, Back to Black is a story of addicts enabling each other .  There’s the scaling out to other substances.  The fights and breakups, the return to their exes and their return to each other.  It’s all part of the addiction cycle.  Others involved in Winehouse’s life have confessed to their being the gateway that led to a broader addiction. The movie, however, has her solely the reason for her downfall and death.             

The romance foregrounds everything such  that secondary characters become shadows of themselves.  Amy’s father, Mitch (Eddie Marsan) doesn’t rise about well meaning and occasionally misguided parent.  He gets a whitewash because he’s irl both the administrator of Winehouse’s estate and  a producer on the film, who swung a deal for an official biopic with the production company.  An aunt played nicely by Lesley Manville exists as a supportive but tragic echo of Amy’s future.  That future included curtailed expectations of having children.  She becomes the victim of her fame and domestic dreams. 

Back to Black gets a 3.0/5 or a B.  It’s streaming on Peacock.

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CREDITS:

Directed by

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Screenplay by

Matt Greenhalgh

Produced by

• Alison Owen
• Debra Hayward
• Nicky Kentish-Barnes

Starring

• Marisa Abela
• Jack O’Connell
• Eddie Marsan
• Lesley Manville

Cinematography

Polly Morgan

Edited by

• Martin Walsh
• Laurence Johnson

Music by

• Nick Cave
• Warren Ellis

Production

companies

• Monumental Pictures
• StudioCanal

Distributed by

• StudioCanal (United Kingdom)
• Focus Features(United States)

Release dates

• 12 April 2024(United Kingdom)
• 17 May 2024(United States)

Running time

122 minutes[1]

Countries

• United Kingdom
• United States[2]

Language

English

Budget

$30 million

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