Back to Black - Good, Bad & Chemical Reactions

When the movie theater closed down during the pandemic, I never thought I'd miss it. Yet, as with all things forbidden, every time I walked past those little empty counters, I found myself wishing for it more and more. Just plop down into one of those soft, cushy chairs with a greasy bag of popcorn in hand, and just lose myself a couple hours.

Now that the theaters have re-opened, I'm taking any chance I can get to go see something. I must've gone to the movies more in the past year than I had in the 5 years leading up to the pandemic. Times change. You.

With the city playing it quiet for Orthodox Easter here, I took advantage yesterday of the silence and absence of crowds to go see Back to Black: The Amy Winehouse Story. I'm usually reluctant about this sort of movie. Too often, I find, they try to exonerate the protagonist and pin the blame for tragic downfall on someone just off to the side. Like they did with the Elvis movie a couple years ago. Nice enough movie, I thought, but I didn't like how they made it all out as The Colonel's fault. Like Elvis was some big man-child who simply could not do wrong of his own. I thought they did a similar thing with the Priscilla movie last year, though to be fair, Priscilla Presley was a teenager when Elvis met her.

Still, if there's one thing this new Amy movie does, it's it embraces her role in her own downfall. It doesn't tell you it was shifty managers, an over-controlling family member, or an abusive spouse who destroyed the fate of this pristine songbird. Nope. They make Amy out as quite capable of bringing about her own downfall, and it feels far more honest than if they tried to throw around the blame.

Beyond that and beyond the phenomenal soundtrack, Back to Black is just a plain good movie. It's got a strong lead. I thought Marisa Abela, who portrays the late icon, mastered the perfect balance of spunkiness and soul that made you get out of that watch-mode judgy mentality of "Is she getting the accent right?" or "Is her hair high enough?". I thought Abela embodied Amy Winehouse beautifully and got you to feel. Didn't try to excuse or justify necessarily the "bad behaviors" that were so vilified by the press, but simply to show that even extremely gifted people can be flawed.

Along that line, the movie doesn't go to extreme lengths to vilify Amy's on-again-off-again partner, Blake Fielder-Civil. Or at least, I don't think it does. Though it does capture Blake's fame-hunger and gold-digger-ish approach to Amy's fame, I'd say the film focuses on the codependent, toxic aspects of their relationship, rather than make him out as the bad guy in an otherwise good girl's life.

Though I love Amy's music, I never followed the gossip-y documentaries and all those books people who knew her seemed to put out. You've got her dad's book and her mom's book and so-and-so neighbor's book. I think it's tabloidesque and disrespectful, though reading some reviews for Back to Black, I'm understanding there's a world of gossip I'm not privy to. Surrounding the tragic death of a fantastically gifted woman, factions seem to have emerged. Some people blame her dad, while others exonerate him. Some hate Blake's guts, while praising the mom, while others do the reverse.

I wonder... does it really matter? I'm starting to see in the world and in my own life that nothing is ever as easy or as black-and-white that such narratives make it seem. I think it might be a fruitful story to make out Amy's dad, husband or manager as the bad guy, except I don't think life has that many bad guys.

If there are purely evil, bad people out there, I think they're quite few and far between.

It's more likely, in many of these tragic celeb stories, that it's simply a case of flawed people doing what they can. Of people neither good nor bad who, when put together, can cause catastrophe for each other. Not because of inane evil, but because of the chemical reaction. None of us are static. We're perpetually interacting with and reacting to people around us.

Anyway, it's a great movie. I really enjoyed it. Is it accurate? I don't know. I was 12 when Amy Winehouse died. I remember it. Remember vaguely that this lewd, bombastic sort of woman had died of drugs or something. It was only later I started seeing a more well-rounded image of her. It's a sad, teary, exciting watch. I think you might enjoy it even if you don't know much or particularly love Amy.

But that's just my two cents' worth.