Amy Winehouse won Grammy awards at the 2008 gala. The camera was on him just as he heard that Rehab was chosen as song of the year. Suddenly, the biggest star of the evening shrank into a small helpless girl who hid her face first in the arms of the band members and then in her mother’s arms.
Many people remember this moving moment, because the video clip has been diligently circulated ever since.
The scene is also seen in the new one Back to Black -in the biopic, and it looks very authentic. Actor Marisa Abelakin has watched the clip many times.
Musician biopics seem to be on the surface. A movie has been seen this spring Bob Marleysta, who, like Winehouse, was an Island label artist. And there’s more to come, at least About Michael Jackson and About Bob Dylan. Sam Mendes gets to direct no less than four Beatles films, each member’s own.
Authenticity appeals to. Part of the marketing is always the stage when the main actors are announced, and we get to ask if it looks good. Timothée Chalamet currently practicing Dylan’s way of speaking.
Maybe this is a race with artificial intelligence.
By all accounts, making biographical films is worthwhile, at least if they are made for sure according to the supposed wishes of the audience. The movie Amy belongs to that series.
It is specifically careful not to surprise and only tells what is expected and known in advance: the story of a super talented female artist who wasted herself on drugs and died after bringing the music world to her knees.
Winehouse’s heart stopped in 2011, just three years after her triumphant Grammy gala.
On the move let’s start with the teenage years, when Amy already starts to stand out from the crowd of girls. The family is working class and the parents are Jewish. Musicality is inherited from the grandmother Cynthia.
See you in the role of father Eddie Marsanplays the grandmother Lesley Manville, both at the cutting edge of British drama. The main actress, Marisa Abela, has emerged Industryfrom the series.
With age and career, intoxicants enter the picture and eventually great love Blake (Jack O’ Connell), with which we travel towards the bottom mud. The relationship with Blake is the most touching and sincere part of the film. Perhaps that is the reason why the director Sam Taylor-Johnson has grasped the subject and the point of view he would have liked to focus on. However, the whole package comes with it.
Amy Winehouse has what it takes to be the Marilyn or Diana of the music world, and she’s lurking Back to Blackin in the background. These women are destined to be told again and again through their bodies. Pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages and eating disorders are included as a matter of course and without question, as if the story could not exist without them.
Music follows in everything, as it followed Amyak. The hard life and deep feelings were transferred directly to the songs: Back to Black, Rehab. In the film, there is still no credible connection between music and personality.
Marisa Abela sings all the numbers herself and not bad at all, but no one can sing like Amy.
At its weakest Back to Black aims for mere imitation, and Abela’s acting is also based on that, in addition to the fact that she is, of course, carefully and skillfully masked. Abela has learned to crane her neck exactly the way we remember Amy always doing.
Even the profile is built to look like its prototype.
You can always ask why. What appeals about appearance, imitation?
Amy Winehousen the career coincided with the years when mobile phone photography started to become more common, and smartphone already started to take over the field. There is plenty of authentic material available and accessible to everyone. That’s exactly why the pressure of appearance feels wrong and pointless in this film. And superficial.
Asif Kapadia did documentary Amy back in 2015. It revealed the publicity that Amy was thrust into with her success.
The Oscar-winning film was quite an exhaustive presentation of Amy’s fate, and fiction cannot be compared to it. The documentary did not spare anyone from Amy’s close circle and also showed how openly a woman with substance abuse problems could be mocked at that time. Amy’s moki became a joke that was freely laughed at, despite the fact that everyone recognized her talent.
Perhaps something has already been learned from these times.
Back to Black smoothes out and at the same time flattens, for example, this side but also close relationships. Mitch- father has been a contradictory character, which does not appear in Abela’s role work either. Similarly, Blake is a more likable guy here than the documentary let on.
Director Sam Taylor-Wood has a feeling for musicians, as his debut film Nowhere Boy (2009) reported on the young John Lennonista. Let it be mentioned as a gossip that about the one who played Lennon Aaron Taylor-Johnsonista became her husband and now in recent news a strong candidate for the new James Bond.
Nick Cave has composed a beautiful song for the closing credits of the film Song for Amy.
Written by Matt Greenhalgh. Starring Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Cowan, Lesley Manville.