Amy Winehouse and the Star of David

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) achieved her international breakthrough with her album »Back to Black«.

Photo: © 2024 Focus Features, LLC.

A clip with the potential to give you goosebumps recently circulated on social media: Amy Winehouse is on stage, just finishing up with her band From today's perspective, the irritatingly prophetic song "Rehab"was played, and now she is stunned. There are moments between audience excess and facial cinema until the singer realizes that Rehab has been named album of the year and she falls into the arms of her bandmates.

Winehouse was able to take home five Grammys in 2008, or more precisely: take home herself had it sent, because due to her drug problems she couldn't get a visa for the USA at the time and was connected from the Riverside studios in London.

The singer's death is hinted at in a slightly slipped poeticization

This scene is charged with pop culture , faithfully captured, also seen towards the end of Sam Taylor-Johnson's biopic Back to Black. The re-enactment forms a later highlight of the film, before the death of the singer, who was found dead in July 2011 with over four per mille of alcohol in her blood, is hinted at at the end in a slightly slipped poeticization with fluttering white curtains.

The film does not have a critical discussion in mind.

Back to Black pours Winehouse's alcohol and drug-induced biography into a classically staged, family-approved biopic. Taylor-Johnson does not have a critical discussion in mind like Asif Kapadia did in his documentary Amy and for which the director was attacked by Winehouse's father.

The biopic based on a script by Matt Greenhalgh begins at a family celebration , in which Amy (Marisa Abela), who initially appears girlish, talks to her beloved grandma Cynthia (Lesley Manville). Finally, the woman with the smoky, soulful voice performs “Fly Me to the Moon” in a duet with father Mitch (Eddie Marsan) and is celebrated by the family members.

The Winehouse monument in Camden Town was decorated with pro-Palestinian stickers tainted

The singer's Jewish roots accompany the film throughout; later, for example, she wears a Star of David necklace. The fact that unknown people defaced the Winehouse monument in the London district of Camden Town with pro-Palestinian stickers in response to the Middle East conflict recently brought the late singer back into the media.

Back to Black traces how the young, self-confident woman appeared the world-famous singer becomes: her great love for jazz, modern pop music and Lauryn Hill's hip-hop, a song played with the guitar on the bed, the first record deal, then smaller and larger performances.

Even if not As it becomes clear how much time passes, the traces of changes become inscribed in Marisa Abela's body. Her Amy's look leans more towards retro, more and more tattoos adorn her body, and soon that characteristic 60s "Beehive"updo is piled up on her head.

That Taylor-Johnson has one more with the young Brit Choosing a fairly fresh face for the role of the superstar is a successful coup. Abela looks confusingly similar to the singer at times and plays her in stage scenes and in her private life with a punkish attitude.

The latter, her private life, is what Back to Black focuses on. Even if music plays an important role, Taylor-Johnson, as in her film Nowhere Boy about the young John Lennon or as Bradley Cooper did recently in his Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, is primarily interested in interpersonal relationships: with her grandmother , to her divorced parents, but more to her father, a taxi driver who motivates her as an artist and who underestimates her early moments of addiction.

More anarchy would have suited the film and the singer who searches for love through excesses.

The focus is on the relationship with her future husband Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell), who, as pop history knows, introduced the singer to harder drugs. Taylor-Johnson stages the meeting of the two in a pub in Camden as a love-at-first-sight moment soaked in alcohol and nicotine. Amy's mother, who is in poor health, is not happy because the new guy, whose name will soon be tattooed on the right side of the singer's chest, is not Jewish.

The film shows how great love turns into a toxic relationship

The The film shows how great love turns into a toxic relationship and how Winehouse, who actually only wants to be heard with her music based on her own life, suffers from the constant publicity. The paparazzi of the British Yellow Press lie in wait for her everywhere, they literally dismantle the singer, who later becomes permanently drunk, with their attacks and exploit her escapades.

Back to Black is cinematographically soft-focused, dramaturgically conventional cinema. More anarchy would have suited the film and the singer looking for love through excesses.

And yet it still gives you goosebumps because Amy Winehouse has left such a huge musical footprint with just two albums and thanks to the film you can once again see her great ones songs can indulge. It's hard to imagine what Winehouse could have given the world if she hadn't joined the tragically famous Club 27.

The film is in cinemas from April 11th.