Everyman
"I've just drunk eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's a record."
Dylan Thomas; last words; attrib.
Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy ends with a young Scouse guitarist making it up with his dour Auntie, mentioning that he's changed the name of his band, and heading off to Germany. A caption pops up on the screen, telling us that the band was really, really, successful, but that two decades later, he was senselessly murdered.
I have never consciously listened to a record by Amy Winehouse. I have a horrible feeling I have her confused in my head with Lilly Allen, although since I have never consciously heard a Lilly Allen song, that may not make a great deal of difference. Which makes me wonder what I was doing watching Back to Black in the first place. I think it probably seemed a better bet than the one about the Indian man who dresses up as a gorilla. I didn't fancy Ghostbusters IV because I haven't seen Ghostbusters III or Ghostbusters IV and didn't even like the original all that much.
Which kind of puts me in the position of the guy who saw Nowhere Boy without having heard of the Beatles. Back to Black ends with Amy Winehouse having apparently got her head together: she's finally been treated for her alcoholism and triumphantly won her fifth Grammy award. She doesn't even go to the after-show party in case she's tempted to have a drink. Having just moved into a fabulous new pink chandelier-bedecked house, she feels sad and starts to sing one of her songs to herself. Fade to black: a caption tells us that she relapsed and died of alcohol poisoning. Presumably, if I knew the story, I would know if that happened straight after the Grammy success or a lot later; and if there were other contributing causes. One of the paparazzi who has followed her around from the beginning has just yelled at her that her former husband has had a baby with his new wife, and the film has strongly implied that despite being a hugely successful singer all-she-really-ever-wanted-to-be-was-a-mum. There is a rather touching scene where she beautifully gives a young fan an autograph, right after buying far too much vodka and far too many fags. Are we supposed to think that this is what sent her hurtling back to the bottle? But clearly I'm supposed to know all this already. Which is fair enough. It would be quite odd to have come out of Nowhere Boy wondering if the fresh-faced guitarist who gatecrashed the church fete was going to be important in the protagonist's later career.
There seems to be a vibe in press right now that films about musicians are bad-wrong, and even I am disposed to admit that four films about the Beatles may be overdoing it slightly. I am not convinced that the existence of one very good parody, Walk Hard, should terminate the entire genre, any more than Life of Brian should have brought historical epics to an end. I think that Baz Luhrmann's Elvis would have been a pretty good movie even if no such person as Elvis Presley existed in the primary world; although a weird impressionist fantasy like I'm Not There only justifies its existence if you think that Bob Dylan is very important indeed. Which obviously I do.
The whole heart of Back to Black is Marisa Abela's charismatic portrayal of what I assume really was a very charismatic young woman. She is barely ever off the screen: she may lack interiority (except through her songs, which is presumably the point) but we are drawn to her even when she's at her most self-destructive, which is always. I had a sense of the singer functioning as an audience surrogate: she channels her very personal pain into songs -- she ends up jumping off the Pyramid stage in order to get closer to fans -- and that makes us feel that we could or should also transmute our own pain into fame. There are no coy attempts to generalise the lyrics or disguise the subject matter: she refers to lovers and family members by their actual names.
I didn't feel that the film told me anything about the artist -- either from a documentary point of view, or in terms of her importance or what she meant to her fans. It is fairly clear that she was a serious musician with an interest in the history of music, influenced by relatively un-hip performers like Charlie Parker and Tony Bennett. (There is a nice scene in which she hears Leader of the Pack for the first time, the raw melodramatic emotionalism of the song only slightly marred by the fact that people of my age know it primarily from a 1970s jeans advert.) But there is precious little about the process of composing music. There is one-of-those-scenes where Amy sits on her bed, strums a guitar, and (what I assume to be) a famous song takes shape. But we see hardly any rehearsals or hours in the studio; this is not the sort of performer who ever had to learn to play the guitar. There is some pretty compelling stuff about the music business: I like the way she deliberately turns up late to meetings and insults record execs, cannily knowing that this enhances her outsider image.
The period detail is wonderful: fin de siecle Camden town, which I knew a bit, is called to life with TARDIS like authenticity. Much the most interesting thing in the movie is Amy's relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell). It isn't clear if he comes on to her because she is famous, or despite her fame. He's clearly funny and we can clearly see why she's attracted to him, but we more than half suspect he doesn't deserve her. He pretends not to recognise her when they first meet in the Good Mixer (I know that pub); they get together, split up, get back together, marry and divorce. He's the basis for some heartfelt break-up songs. I have no idea how fair or unfair the movie is to the real man, who is presumably alive and capable of suing.
But much of the rest of the movie is a void. Amy's father comes across as a literary type, the gor-blimey salt of the earth cab driver. Her revered Nan doesn't have many more dimensions. Amy appears to have no friends: even at the height of her fame, we don't see her hanging out with other celebrities. Her life seems to go from bedroom to bar to stage. Maybe that's what fame is like.
Phillip Norman's biography of the Beatles is divided into four sections: Wanting; Getting; Having; Wasting. Which kind of says everything that needs to be said, though not everything there is to say. I am not sure what there was to distinguish Back to Black from every other show biz tragedy. Wanting It All; Having It All; Throwing It All Away. Are we to think that the addiction was the result of the success, or simply a medical issue Amy could never escape from? Narratively speaking, booze is not a very interesting character flaw. I recall when Melvin Bragg asked Anthony Hopkins about his alcoholism, he replied "I used to drink too much, so I stopped drinking." The message could have been "what a terrible waste; she threw it all away for vodka" or "let this be a warning about what happens if you don't get help." But I am afraid it was meant to be "she had to sacrifice her health to make music."
The Early John Lennon happily admitted that his ambition was "to be rich and famous". If it's true that Winehouse never wanted fame and only ever wanted people to like her songs then there is an irony in her relentless pursuit by the photographers. Are paparazzi really a many-headed faceless mob? Aren't some of them human beings as well? Didn't Winehouse ever have a brand manager to help her navigate this sort of thing?
I forget if it was Sandman or Doctor Who who said that we all turn into stories in the end. When someone tells a joke about a murder or a natural disaster, people will sometimes say "Too soon!" And maybe it is too soon to tell the story of Amy Winehouse. A decade on, all a film can do is rush us through the facts, a misleading pseudo-documentary, a piece of unreality TV. Perhaps if the dust had been given longer to settle the facts would have had a chance to congeal into a legend that would have been worth the filming. I was fascinated, but I kept wondering what really happened. And what the people who were really there made of it all.
The staging of the final Grammy award set was sufficiently compelling that I momentarily felt I was at an actual gig and ought to have applauded. I came out of the Elvis movie and immediately looked up the Unchained Melody footage and the real comeback TV show. I can't honestly say that Back to Black left me with any particular urge to listen to the songs of Amy Winehouse. But I may go easy on the booze for a while.
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