How Back To Black attempts to reclaim Amy Winehouse's legacy

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson hopes her Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black will "give [the singer] her power back". The filmmakers behind the movie explain their approach to telling a different side to Amy Winehouse's story.

Back To Black is in UK cinemas from 12 April.

Video transcript

KIM TAYLOR-FOSTER: Why was now the right time to tell Amy's story in this way, in a dramatized way?

SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON: I think it felt like it was time to give her-- her power back because I felt like the tragedy and her-- a sense of her being a victim was starting to sort of overshadow who she was.

EDDIE MARSAN: It isn't a film that makes Mitch or Blake the villain, but it- it doesn't sanitize them. It shows the mistakes they made. But because it's shot from Amy's perspective, you can see why she fell in love with Blake and you can see why she loved her dad. And I think that honors Amy more than-- more than a binary narrative.

When someone like Amy dies, so young, who's touched their lives in such a profound way, there's a kind of collective trauma. And one of the ways you deal with trauma is you create a narrative to make sense of it. And a comfortable narrative for that kind of trauma is there must be someone to blame.

Because if my daughter doesn't marry someone like Blake or if I don't behave the way they say Mitch behaves, this won't happen to me. This won't happened to my family. And that's reassuring. But that's not how addiction works. Because addiction is random. It's arbitrary. It's chaotic. It's cruel.

And what I love about this film is that addiction is the villain, addiction and papara-- and the paparazzi.

KIM TAYLOR-FOSTER: I wanted to touch on Mitch's involvement. Did his involvement affect any of the artistic decisions in any way?

SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON: He wasn't officially involved because we had all the music rights. We had music rights from Universal and Sony. So we had everything. But it was really important to me that I showed respect to the family. I was making a film about their daughter after all.

So I went to meet with Mitch. And I went to meet with Janis. And I spent a bit of time hearing stories, and then invited them both to come to set on one of the days of filming. And then-- but it was really important to me that I could make the film creatively that I wanted to make without anyone's involvement, even the studio. I just was, like, no. And this is the film I'm making.

And so I'm just going to zone everybody out. And that was so important for me as part of the creative process because the minute you start sort of hearing voices, it really, you know, affects how you shoot characters or see scenes. And so I had to kind of just be quite firm with everyone of just I'm making this film.