Film Evaluate: Amy Winehouse story flattened in irritating biopic ‘Again to Black’
“ Again to Black ” as a film is a tame and mediocre affair. A conventionally advised biopic a few proficient artist who turned well-known, struggled with medication, despair and bulimia, and died early. There are good performances from gifted actors like Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville, and a soundtrack of hits that helps fill the house.
However as a portrait of Amy Winehouse? It’s merely dreadful.
The primary drawback with any film about Winehouse is {that a} defining movie already exists — Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning documentary “Amy,” launched 4 years after her demise from alcohol poisoning at age 27. Instructed via archival materials, house movies and observations from these round her, it felt as intimate and unfiltered as a diary.
“Amy” was a sobering portrait of dependancy, fame and complicity that additionally allow you to get to know and love the particular person behind the songs, the eyeliner, the beehive, the bloodied ballet slippers and the invasive paparazzi images. It was nobody’s concept of sensationalistic and she or he’s doing many of the speaking.
“Amy” was additionally a film that didn’t sit properly together with her grieving household. Her father, Mitch Winehouse, stated it was deceptive and contained “fundamental untruths.” After it received the Oscar, he doubled down saying that it had no bearing on her life and was manipulative. Kapadia, he stated, was extra exploitative of his daughter than anybody.
Following her demise, Mitch began a basis in her title to assist younger individuals and wrote a e-book about her and being the daddy of an addict. Her mom Janis narrated a documentary, “Reclaiming Amy,” launched in 2011. And after years of declining to take part in a story biopic, the property determined to permit one with full use the songs. Like many musical biopics made alongside an property, it is arduous not to take a look at “Again to Black” skeptically, questioning whose pursuits the movie is serving.
Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed, has stated that she wished to take the thought of “blame” out of the equation, that the household had zero enter on her reduce and wouldn’t profit financially. And but it additionally looks as if a direct response to Kapadia’s movie, depicting various key moments wildly otherwise. They don’t seem to be simply proven in a special gentle — some are telling a very totally different story.
The screenplay by Matthew Greenhalgh is empathetic to the ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil (O’Connell) and her father Mitch (Marsan), each of whom have been villainized through the years. Within the movie, most are simply caught up in a whirl of inevitability and the retrospective blur of grief.
There appears to be an extreme quantity of rationalizing in the way in which everybody concerned talks about “Again to Black,” over justifying its existence and its decisions. However simply because everybody retains telling us that it’s a celebration doesn’t imply that we’ve to get on board. I’m unsure what’s celebratory about dramatizing this tragedy, or useful, or suave, or significantly revelatory about it both. The media, for instance, is diminished primarily to the paparazzi camped exterior her place as if that’s the place the issue stopped.
Taylor-Johnson has stated she didn’t wish to glamorize despair, dependancy or bulimia both, however the latter, which she struggled with earlier than she was well-known, is barely even acknowledged. Depiction of consuming problems is inherently fraught, however there needed to have been a technique to handle such a big a part of her life and self-image extra immediately.
Although linear, the story can be oddly complicated, assuming that the viewers is aware of many particulars of her life (like, say, the bulimia) and the individuals in it. The movie rushes via main profession moments in montage, seeming to decelerate just for just a few issues: A efficiency, Amy’s face in varied types of drunken misery and agony or scenes together with her and Blake. Was it trying a freewheeling jazz kind, or is it simply messy?
In some methods, this portrait of Amy Winehouse makes her immense expertise the sideshow and her obsession/romance/heartache over Blake the defining story of her grownup life. That is at the very least considerably redeemed by the chemistry between Abela and O’Connell, who look far too glowing and wholesome to be plausible as heroin addicts.
However the best failing is how shockingly cliche the ending is. For all of “Again to Black’s” tiptoeing round delicate topics, its romantically photographed sendoff to Amy is maybe probably the most dangerously glamorized shot within the movie. It doesn’t even fade to black after a title card declares her demise. Earlier than anybody can really feel something, they’ve reduce to Amy telling the viewers that every one she needs is for her songs to make individuals neglect about their troubles for a bit.
By this level, it reads extra like a closing assertion for a movie that by no means wished to problem, offend or transfer anybody. Mission completed.
“Again to Black,” a Focus Options launch in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Movement Image Affiliation for “drug use, language all through, sexual content material and nudity.” Operating time: 122 minutes. One and a half stars out of 4.
