I watched this yesterday at the Beacon cinema in Eastbourne.
It was another film about a musician that didn’t really seem to be about the music. She was portrayed as naturally gifted and talented and her path to a first record deal seemed very straightforward. Instead, the film focussed on Amy’s love affair with and marriage to Blake but also foregrounded her relationships with her father and his mother. Although this contextualised her music - her nan had been a jazz singer, her dad sang Sinatra to her at parties - it was the relationships that were important. I suppose it was trying to find a reason for her turbulent life which descended into alcohol and drug addiction and would be terminated by alcohol poisoning at the age of 27.
It was made clear that her songs were inspired by her personal life. An early boyfriend was shown breaking up with her after discovering that some very unflattering lyrics were about him. She flounced out of a meeting with record executives saying she needed to live more life so that she could write more songs. Perhaps ‘inspired’ is the wrong word. Amy mined her relationships for material; this may have damaged them. The impression that I gained from the film was that she was self-destructive and that she dragged others down with her, although Blake - who introduced her to class A drugs including crack cocaine - was a key factor in her descent into addiction. It is implied that her death may have been triggered after she heard from paparazzi that Blake - who had divorced her after a spell in prison during which he recognised the mutual harm they were doing to one another - was having a child with another woman.
Another target for blame was the press whose photographers hounded Amy. What surprised me was how much she allowed herself to be seen (according to the film) intoxicated, dishevelled and distressed; it was as if this was another mutually destructive relationship.
Her family, on the other hand, emerged scott free. Her nan (superbly played by Lesley Manville) was apparently a saint and her father Midge (the incomparable Eddie Marsan) was a gentle kindly man who worried about and cared for his wayward daughter.
The film itself was a very workaday production hitting the right notes without ever becoming really thrilling. The set piece songs were superbly done. It was enjoyable. But again, I wanted to know more about how she created the sound.
The Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer gave it 43% and said it was “disappointingly pedestrian”. 1MDb rated it 6.7/10. The Guardian (two stars out of five) called the film “wildly uneven and prone to catastrophic misjudgments” although it praised Marisa Abela, the actor playing Amy, saying that there are “moments when Abela disappears and Winehouse bursts on to the screen” which is praise indeed.
PS
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,/ Moves on” as Omar Khayyam says, according to Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the 51st quatrain of his Rubaiyat. This is the way it is with blog posts. They are scribbled off, with minimal correction, and then published. And then, after they have been published, I look back on them and wonder why they don’t say what I really meant.
For example, having read that Guardian review I realise that I should have given more credit to Marisa Abela. An actress who can disappear into the role is extraordinarily skilful and, after all, Farsan and Manville were playing the safe, comfortable characters. I also realise that I should have been more censorious of Blake, as portrayed by the film. He is shown as getting back with Winehouse after a friend has suggested that it might be one way to pay a drug debt; this suggests that Blake was a user of people as well as class A drugs.
But the real problem with the previously written post is that I haven’t really explained what I mean by the film not seeming to be about the music. After all, it demonstrated quite clearly that her sounds were inspired by her immersion in jazz and that her lyrics were inspired by her personal life and her relationships.
But. The process of creation was shown (as usual in musical biopics) by her strumming her guitar and feeling for the notes and singing a line and feeling for the notes and hesitating and searching for the words. Perhaps that’s all it takes for a genius to compose a hit record. But it’s not the way I write. It doesn’t show the endless rewriting, the obsessive repetition, exploring for a new word, angrily dismissing a paragraph as utter rubbish only to come back to it again the next day, the repeated feeling that my work is worthless and the occasional euphoria as I read through something and think: wow!
I suppose I’m asking for a lot. How can a film demonstrate this without becoming boring? Because artistic creation - for me, at least - involves hours sitting at a keyboard. And I don’t think I’m the only one. Edison reputedly said that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” For me, art is no more than 10% vision and at least 90% revision (the latest draft of Don Petro is the Q version). This would not only make the film longer and more boring, it would also rewrite the narrative. No longer would the artiste be shown as an impulsive, drink and drug-addled rakehell. They would be shown as someone who spent long hours crafting their work, concentrating hard, focusing on tiny details, polishing and improving endlessly in order to achieve perfection.
But isn’t that what an artist is?
Perhaps musicians are different. Paul Macartney, it is said, sat down at the piano keyboard one morning and played the melody for Yesterday, although it took him some time before he could pair it with the appropriate lyrics. Lennon and Macartney were able to write songs right there and then in a hotel bedroom, or on a tour bus, and when they were asked to come up with a middle eight, they did it in minutes. But that is still not the whole story. It doesn’t tell how they developed their sound by performing for hours on end in Hamburg. And, although their first album was recorded in a day, being fundamentally based upon their live performances that had been improved and improved over months, when they recorded later albums they took many many takes and the whole band repeatedly experimented and tweaked and revised. So, although performance inevitably involves producing something that, there and then, might not be perfect (although that is what rehearsal is for), I don’t think musicians are very different after all.
Perhaps what I’m seeking is a biopic about musicians that shows some of the mistakes, some of the rejections, some of the insecurity and anger about whether they are any good (and not just beloved and adored). Perhaps a start would be for the film to concentrate on where the artist spends most of his or her time, in rehearsal or in the recording studio, rather than showing the triumph of a final performance.
Because that’s what film making is too. A day’s shooting for a minute in the can. Take after take after take.
But how to make it interesting? How to keep the viewer gripped?
Perhaps we don’t do a biopic but just focus on the creation of a single song. After all, there are plenty of one hit wonders, and even an icon like Amy Winehouse is only remembered for a handful of songs.
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