What does a biopic owe its subject?

AMY WINEHOUSE WROTE SONGS THAT CUT TO THE CORE of heartbreak and sang them in a voice as supple and sturdy as raw silk.

- STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

Abela as Winehouse: a missed opportunity to capture a complex life

In her short lifetime, she earned millions of fans, a number that has only increased since her death from alcohol poisoning in 2011, at age 27. She’d long struggled with substance abuse and mental-health problems, and there’s evidence that those in her inner circle—people who stood to profit off her gifts—had failed her. No wonder those who love her feel protective of her even after death.

When the trailer for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic Back to Black dropped, Winehouse fans sprang into mother bear mode. They claimed that the film looked cheesy, and that its star, Marisa Abela (from HBO’s Industry), who did her own singing, looked and sounded nothing like Winehouse. Worst of all, the film had been made with the cooperation of Winehouse’s father Mitch, the “daddy” who, in real life and in Winehouse’s megahit “Rehab,” had at one time deemed his daughter’s use of alcohol—the addiction that would eventually kill her—nothing to worry about. Why make a film about Amy Winehouse at all? the fans demanded. She’d suffered enough. Why not just let her rest?

There’s no clear answer to whether a troubled artist’s life should ever become fodder for a movie. Taylor-Johnson had said she sought to celebrate Winehouse’s music rather than fixate on the more sordid details of her life, and she’s arguably pulled that off. But in its middling safeness, Back to Black is also a far less robust picture than Winehouse deserves. Its failures, and fans’ anger about it even before they’d seen it, raise entwined questions: What does a music biopic owe its audience? More important, what does it owe its subject?