Review #968: 'Amy' (2015)

When the news broke on July 23rd 2011 that singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse had been found dead of complications brought on by years of drug and alcohol abuse, there was almost a "told you so" response by the public, or at least the people who I interacted with. People certainly mourned the passing of a truly great artist, but there was an air of inevitability, almost as if this was the natural end to her brief career. Her life played out in front of the tabloids and no doubt played a key part in her sad demise, but Amy, directed by Asif Kapadia of Senna (2010) fame, explores a wealth of home footage previously unseen in an attempt to unravel just what drove the young lady to such self-destruction.

The home footage that has been uncovered is often extremely intimate stuff. We at first meet Amy as a teenager. Pretty, loud and full of life, she and her friends are just lounging about being regular teenagers until Amy suddenly bursts into a rendition of Happy Birthday. The soundtrack then kicks in with her youthful version of Moon River, and it's difficult not to be bowled over by such a soulful voice coming out of the then 19 year-old. As her career begins to pick up, she is asked how she believes she would react to fame. She replies that she doesn't believe she could handle it. Following the release of Frank, her first album, the excessive drug and alcohol intake begins, just as two key male figures re-enter her life.

Kapadia avoids laying the blame on anyone in particular, as the two people who come across the worst in this documentary - her father Mitch Winehouse and husband Blake Fielder-Civil - are heavy participants in the film. It was Fielder-Civil who first introduced Amy to crack, and when her friends gathered around her to try and put a stop to it, her father told her that she didn't need help. This, of course, was the inspiration for the song Rehab. It is at this point, around the half-way mark, that Amy becomes difficult to watch. We all saw the pictures of her bloody and red-eyed at the end of one particularly heavy binge in the newspapers, but its the revelation that Amy told one of her friends everything is boring without drugs during a clean spell that hits home the most.

However, this is not just an extremely sad tale of a talented artists death, Amy also celebrates the music and, in particular, her song-writing ability. During most of the stunning performance footage on show here, her vocals are accompanied by her lyrics written on-screen, which are not only extremely important in helping to understand Amy, but help sculpt the narrative of the film. She is praised as one of the finest jazz singers of all time by Tony Bennett, and it's difficult to disagree. The praise lavished upon her here makes it even more difficult to watch the footage of various comedians mocking the troubled singer. In an age of instant reactions on social media, I guess it has now become socially acceptable to make jokes about a woman in her twenties crippled by mental illness and addition. It's an extremely upsetting story, and when the credits roll it genuinely feels like you have lost a friend.


Directed by: Asif Kapadia
Starring: Amy Winehouse, Mitch Winehouse, Blake Fielder-Civil
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie