Musical blockbusters are experiencing a renaissance. After the extraordinarily profitable, albeit banal, hit Bohemian Rhapsody from 2018 or the formidable, way more profitable portrait of Elton John known as Rocketman, Czech cinemas have now additionally began displaying the story of one of many largest and most tragic stars of the music trade, Amy Winehouse. It is known as Again to Black and sadly it may be summed up in three phrases: she sang, she drank, she died.
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Czech cinemas are screening Again to Black from Thursday. Picture: Dean Rogers | Video: CinemArt
Within the opening scene on the household gathering Amy Winehouse in fact he’ll quickly begin singing. Nearly like the start of a jazz jam. Individuals take part, the digital camera seems at their faces in an old style approach, nearly like within the days of basic Hollywood. Already at that second, suspicions start to develop regarding what director Sam Taylor-Johnson really needs to inform.
It’s unattainable to not bear in mind the start of one other, way more profitable movie. Asif Kapadia additionally kicked off his 2015 documentary Amy with a celebration. Someplace on the steps, 14-year-old women are spinning with a hand-held video digital camera, their faces glued to the lens seem from the grainy picture, nearly like within the horror movie The Blair Witch Thriller, and there’s extra pressure and energy on this quick section than in the whole British-American function movie.
Again to Black is a straightforward musical melodrama a couple of lady who loves jazz and her grandmother, wears old style buns, is pleased with her London neighborhood Camden City and will not simply promote out for fame, even when she’s conquering the charts. However then she additionally falls in a little bit of a poisonous love for a younger man who, along with her, fairly likes cocaine. And she or he, in flip, cannot cease ingesting, with which she in all probability removes internal insecurities.
We all know the way it all seems: Amy Winehouse died in 2011 of alcohol poisoning. However why ought to we watch a dramatization of the destiny of a gifted singer who, on the peak of her fame, joined the notorious Membership 27, that’s, a group of musicians who left the world at this very age? Exhausting to discover a single cause. As within the case of Bohemian Rhapsody, the creators don’t attempt to thematize something extra complicated or doubtlessly controversial, which may theoretically have an effect on those that, in contrast to the protagonists, are nonetheless alive.
However the movie concerning the frontman of the band Queen no less than had just a few lavishly directed musical numbers for the followers, who mightn’t deny their fascination.
Marisa Abela acts fairly authentically within the function of Amy Winehouse. | Picture: Dean Rogers
Again to Black solely presents scenes the place the heroine sings just a few occasions round bars, both on stage or simply taking part in pool. And the director places extra emphasis on what Amy Winehouse says earlier than or what occurs following. Which is ok in itself, the movie doesn’t depend on opulent stadium scenes, it tells the story of a barely insecure lady with a guitar.
The creators promised a view from her perspective and tried to movie the other of tabloid articles. It succeeded to some extent, Again to Black is certainly not a celebratory portrait. However additionally it is not a movie that might say something new or stimulating concerning the singer or her music.
With its melodramatic line, truncated perspective and tragic consequence, it’s considerably paying homage to the home collection Iveta concerning the singer Bartošová. However its authors no less than took a daring aesthetic step and admittedly work with components of interval melodramas, an exaggerated shade palette and scenes managed by feelings so clearly that the entire undertaking looks as if a form of darkish model of Czech pop songs. The result’s a extremely stylized spectacle: it might fail in numerous methods, however it nonetheless exudes the braveness to shoot in a different way, non-mainstream. And Iveta additionally exhibits empathy for the lady who additionally died tragically, however at a time when she was now not a profitable singer for the general public for many years, reasonably a form of public goal of ridicule. Within the background of the collection Iveta is the indictment of influential males who manipulated the singer’s life from the start.
Again to Black, however, tries to hit probably the most common style. There is a fairly humorous scene the place the romance begins on the bar and later on the pool desk, there are events and hangovers, and the grandmother, who as soon as was a bit just like the heroine, performs an essential function.
The whole lot right here occurs considerably spontaneously, Amy Winehouse drinks and smokes weed, her boyfriend and later husband Blake takes the strains of one thing sharper, the daddy strikes by means of the movie as a form of grey, however above all, a supporting eminence. Above all, to not have any opinion on anybody within the singer’s manipulative surroundings.
Marisa Abela performs the heroine fairly properly with a selected look, perspective and voice, the interval patina of London pubs and golf equipment appears fairly genuine. In these particulars, Again to Black is a movie that doesn’t offend. Like a forgettable product. However that’s what offends probably the most.
Movie
Again to Black
Directed by: Sam Taylor-Johnson
CinemArt, Czech premiere on Might 16.
