Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black opens in the UK tomorrow; I haven’t seen it yet, but I will, asap. [ETA: here’s my review.] (It debuts in the US on May 17th.) Reviews so far from my critical colleagues are mixed, but however I end up feeling about it, it’s difficult to imagine that it could top the power of the 2015 documentary Amy, from acclaimed director Asif Kapadia.
I’m not a massive Winehouse fangirl, but I like her work well enough, certainly enough to recognize that she was one of the most original musical artists of the 21st century. And yet her story is not, I think, so much about her work as it is about the crushing machinery of fame as it plays out nowadays, and even moreso, perhaps, about how that’s not a surprise to anyone. As I wrote in my 2015 review of the film:
She told us. She told us flat out how it would be. She told us she was a mess. She told us she was self-destructive. She told us fame would kill her. She said it in her lyrics — not even halfway, not in any way metaphorical or sidewise. She said it in interviews.
And still, we killed her. The big We, the unstoppable machine of pop culture. Amy, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary, is a requiem for her, but it is also a condemnation of us, that we let it happen, that we turned her into a joke before she burned out for good.
US: stream on Kanopy and Max (via Prime); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See Amy at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
