What the Controversial Amy Winehouse Biopic Back to Black Gets Right and Wrong (2024)

Released in U.S. theaters on May 17, 2024, Back to Black is a musical biographical drama charting the life and career of the late R&B singer Amy Winehouse. Despite earning positive reviews for Marisa Abela's central performance as the posthumous pop star, the movie has courted controversy for its salacious, tabloid-style storytelling that plays fast and loose with the facts. As a partial result of the controversy, the film currently boasts a lowly 38% Rotten Tomatoes score and a subpar 49 Metascore.

Back to Black chronicles Amy Winehouse's childhood affinity for music that bloomed into a successful professional career. The movie also documents Winehouse's troubled romance with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell). While the biopic gets several factual occurrences from Winehouse's formative years correct, other aspects of the story veer so far from the truth that die-hard fans of the late great singer/songwriter have rejected the movie for its controversial inaccuracy. In separating fact from fiction, a close inspection of Back to Black is in order.

Back to Black

2.5/5

See Also

'We'll only ever have one Amy; no one will be able to replicate what she had': Amy Winehouse’s goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield, reveals the Amy she knew

Release Date

May 10, 2024

Director

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast

Marisa Abela , Jack O'Connell , Eddie Marsan , Lesley Manville , Juliet Cowan

Main Genre

Biography

Runtime

2h 2m

Writers

Matt Greenhalgh

Read our review

Amy Meets Blake in Good Mixer

Correct (Mostly)

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson from a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh, Back to Black begins with Amy Winehouse's childhood, where she is seen singing with her father and grandmother. After her friend Nick sends a demo tape out, Amy is signed by Island Records and records her first album, Frank. While this is all fairly accurate, the plot of the musician movie thickens when Amy meets the love of her life, Blake Fielder-Civil.

In the movie, Amy and Blake meet in a pub called The Good Mixer in Camden Town. According to Blake, this truly occurred, telling The Daily Mail:

"We met at a pub called the Good Mixer in Camden. I'd just had a good win at the bookies so I went to the pub to celebrate, opened the door and Amy was the first person I saw and that was it. And from that night onwards, we began our tortuous love affair.”

Although their meeting and love-at-first-sight attraction are represented accurately, the movie becomes less factual as it progresses.

Amy Started Using Hard Drugs of Her Own Volition

Incorrect

Once Amy and Blake fall fast in love, their romance is marred by drug and alcohol abuse. In the film, Blake's cocaine addiction and erratic behavior cause trouble for the couple. While Amy's battles with alcohol and bulimia are well-documented in real life, the movie suggests the singer began taking hard Class A drugs such as heroin on her own accord. In the film, she calls a heroin dealer, procures the drug, and ingests it by herself.

However, in her hit single Back to Black, Amy croons "You love blow, and I love Puff." The line signifies Blake's affinity for cocaine, a Class A drug, and Amy's penchant for marijuana, a far less dangerous and addictive Class B drug in the UK. Moreover, in the highly inaccurate biopic and her father Mitch's memoir My Daughter Amy, the singer often stated, "Class A Drugs are for Mugs" (as reported by Esquire).

Despite the exploitative scene that makes it appear as if Amy began taking Class A drugs of her own volition, Blake Fielder-Civil has always taken responsibility for getting her hooked on heroin. During an interview on The Jeremy Kyle Show (via The Guardian), Blake took "full accountability" for Amy's heroin addiction, stating:

"I was smoking it on foil and she said 'Can I try some' and I said… I might have put up a weak resistance – the fact is whatever I said she did end up having some.”

Incorrect

Most of the big events depicted in Back to Black are true. Blake's infidelity, Amy's grandmother dying of cancer, Amy's rehab stint, and the release of her Grammy-winning album Back to Black are all portrayed fairly accurately. So too is Amy's infamously disastrous Glastonbury Festival performance, Amy and Blake's post-rehab reconciliation, and hasty marriage in Miami.

However, little attention is given to the overbearing pressure of the media scrutiny and sexist paparazzi coverage that wore on Amy's psyche as she shot to fame. As Vox points out:

"[Back in Black] fails to address the ways the UK’s sexist media and the people around her contributed to her demise. Winehouse is strangely isolated from the media blitz that surrounded her life."

By emphasizing her doomed romance with Blake, the movie glosses over the pressures Amy felt of being a high-profile celebrity preyed upon by the intense media scrutiny that undoubtedly contributed to her addiction. The film puts more onus on Amy's personal choices than the external factors that have troubled countless celebrities in the past.

Whether due to time constraints or the desire to streamline the narrative, Amy hardly ventures beyond Camden Town in the movie and fails to depict the international superstardom she found as a blessing and a curse.

Amy's Discovery of Blake's Baby

Incorrect

Although Amy's vocal desire to become a mother and start a family is accurately represented in the highly controversial movie, Back to Black gets Amy's final encounter with the paparazzi all wrong. After receiving five Grammys for her sophom*ore album, Back to Black, Amy is shown moving into a new home in Camden Town while sober from drugs but not alcohol.

As she bids farewell to her father, Mitch (Eddie Marsan), the media outside her home tell Amy that Blake is expecting a child with his new girlfriend. Amy tearfully sings "Tears Dry on Their Own" from Back in Black as she sadly stumbles back to her room. The movie suggests that this is the breaking point that causes Amy to fatally relapse.

The exploitatively inaccurate conclusion of Back to Black gets several facts wrong. In reality, Amy had been dating a man named Reg Traviss for one year by the time she was sober in her new Camden home. Furthermore, Blake's baby was not born until May 2011, two months before Amy died of alcohol poisoning in July 2011. Not only is Traviss omitted from the film entirely, but the timeline of events is all wrong. Most egregious, Amy did not relapse as a direct result of learning Blake was expecting a baby as the movie infers.

Miscellaneous Inaccuracies & Omissions

Other questionable inaccuracies in Back to Black include Mitch Winehouse's honorable intentions. The late singer's father vocally criticized his unflattering portrayal in the acclaimed 2015 documentary Amy by Asif Kapadia. With Back to Black's blessing from the Winehouse estate, it stands to reason that liberties were taken to depict Mitch Winehouse in a more positive light. As such, many believe Amy deserves a better biographical representation.

In the movie, Mitch shows support by leaving everything in his life behind to take Amy to rehab. The movie does not address Mitch's real-life aversion to his daughter's rehab, as proven in Amy's hit single "Rehab," in which she sings: "If my daddy thinks I’m fine… I won’t go, go, go.” The movie also shies away from the hard-hitting alcohol and drug abuse publicly documented in Amy's life. It tries to sanitize Amy's internal struggles and psychological demons that are partially attributed to her becoming a unique, generational talent and a true artist.

Also missing from the rise-and-fall biopic are Amy's collaborations with esteemed musicians Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi. Actor Jeff Tunke was cast to play Mark Ronson but all his scenes were deleted. The movie is less interested in Amy's creative process and more keen on focusing on her time in Camden and her tumultuous relationship with Blake.

Back to Black's tabloid-style storytelling leaves out many facts of Amy Winehouse's triumphant rise and tragic fall. As such, the movie has been poorly received by critics and Winehouse fans alike, falling into the category of another inaccurate, formulaic, and superficial musical biopic Hollywood needs to move away from. Watch Back to Black in theaters.