Back to Black: Amy Winehouse solitude

Translated by Irene Cecchi

Let’s put aside only for a moment the movie Amy, directed by Asif Kapadia and awarded at the Oscars for the best documentary in 2016, and neither give too much attention to the comparisons of a foolish and conformed audience. Let’s consider only Back to Black and talk about it.

It would be banal to talk about the history or the origin of the title, Amy Winehouse, the singer symbol of the London of the early century, and Back to Black, the song that made her carve out a place in everyone’s hearts.

A step back: when I enter the room I am alone, 12:40 on a sunday it’s not the best time to go to the cinema, I was hoping to hear people’s reactions to the music, to the violences, to the love story with Blake and the sex with other thousand men before him, to the father, to the patriarchy in the music labels’ industry, to paparazzi and people’s insolence, I didn’t get any of it but at the end of the movie I felt luckier than ever.

-It is certainly not the best quality and unfortunately there are some evident mistakes in the direction, as well as a flattening of the story, especially in the middle. The action in some parts is almost theatrical and overall I wasn’t positively impressed. So, why did I feel so lucky?

Because the best way to see this movie is watching it BY YOURSELF. In order to fully understand Amy’s perspective, and Amy herself, you have to understand her solitude. The movie is about the solitude of the British singer in this world.

A banal oxymoron to explain that she was always surrounded by people, her grandmother, her father, Nick, her mother, the music labels, Blake, paparazzi, but no one was truly with her, especially when she needed it the most. During her drunken nights lost in London, during her first issues with drugs, during her periods of depression and when she isolated herself, she actually wanted to share this solitude with those few dear people, like her grandmother, her father and Blake. When she writes her songs she is alone. She wins five Grammys (Beyoncé, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, the Foo Fighters are just some of the singers competing with her that year) but she is alone, the audience and the band circle around her but she is alone in the center, equidistant from everyone.

A movie about the transformation of a body, a female body stuck in youth, a youth full of torments of a 27 years old. Right after signing with the first music label, Amy’s face appears to be more troubled, the tattoo part becomes crucial to move emotions and action during the movie, as if they were a protagonist of the movie. Her last appearance before the closing credits is through her left arm tattoo. A transformation that is even more oppressive and emphatic if we consider the maternity that she always craved but never got.

Another core issue is the representation of the male-dominated music industry that obliges her to change her stage presence in order to succeed in America. The choir and musicians of the famous Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club are all men, the tattoo artists are all men except for only one woman.

Let’s take a step forward, even if it means disappointing some readers, and see a part of an interview:

Journalist: “So why do you need a black director, could a white director not have…?”

Denzel Washington: “It’s not color, it’s culture”

Journalist: “Explain the difference, because I’ve…”

Denzel Washington: “Steven Spielberg did Schindler List, Martin Scorse did GoodFellas, right? Steven Spielberg could direct GoodFellas, Martin Scorse could have done a good job with Schindler's List but there are cultural differences. I know, you know, we all know, it is with a hot comb hits your hair on a Sunday morning, what it smells like, that’s a cultural difference. Not just a color difference, so it’s the culture”

Sam Taylor-Johnson and Nina Gold hit the target by choosing British actors only because, in order to tell a story and a character that are part of British culture you need to “have” that culture. Why are Gucci and Ferrari not worthwhile, or worse? Draw your own conclusions, being italian I did it as soon as I left the cinema.

I cried at the beginning and I was moved at the end, the movie made me go back in time to July 23rd 2011 when I first heard of Amy Winehouse, sitting at the table with my grandmother, maybe it was a sign of destiny that led me to writing about a movie about her life 13 years later. If you are feeling down or alone, go to the cinema and read between the lines of what the Seventh Art wants to share.

Good vision!

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