Amy (2015)

Review:

A tragic tale of a talented young woman, which beautifully serves as a raw warning and a stark reminder.

Amy by Asif Kapadia was always going to be a difficult watch for me. This is not necessarily because I am the world’s biggest Amy Winehouse superfan, but due to experiences within my own family. A week after Amy Winehouse passed away, I also lost my aunt to alcoholism and my partner is a fellow musician who is a recovering alcoholic. This instilled in me a sense of dread about how the singer and her addictions would be depicted, but I need not have worried, as I was presented with an utterly honest and heartfelt portrayal.

Amy tells the desperately sad story of Amy Winehouse’s rise, fall and eventual final push on the self-destruct button; helped by millions of other fingers and even some of those who were closest to her. It’s not surprising that Amy’s father, Mitch Winehouse, has been so angered by the film when it illustrates not particularly flattering evidence of him putting her fame and fortune before her wellbeing. Suddenly the lyrics to her hit song ‘Rehab’ become extremely poignant - especially when we see them scrawled on the screen in her handwriting over images of a girl clearly crying out for help. Some of you, like myself, may simply know of her hit songs, yet undoubtedly feel you know every intimate detail of her downfall thanks to how it was laid out with such ferocity by the media. The fact that Amy has broken box office records for a non-fiction film is probably indicative of the obsession and fascination that grew to shroud her in life. However, whilst she continues to draw in the crowd through this film, hopefully it is forcing audiences to re-evaluate previous notions of her and others who are currently still battling addiction in the media circus we are constantly spectators of.

Kapadia has cleverly used that tactic of purely using real-life images and footage of Amy Winehouse, without any talking head interview shots. By doing this, he is turning what used to saturate our screens, magazines and newspapers on themselves for a refreshingly different purpose – for education, not destruction. At times, we are forced to sit through long shots of her battling her way through what feels like thousands upon thousands of paparazzi flashbulbs in our faces, which, in a small screen, began to feel extremely suffocating. At this point you begin to understand what Kapadia is attempting to show us about how times like these may have possibly made Amy Winehouse, a clear hater of the limelight, feel at the height of her fame. On top of this, we are taken on a journey through her life told by her nearest and dearest, brilliantly narrating her story over home videos (sometimes shot by her) because she is no longer here to do so. [This is where we start seeing some benefit to film technology being accessible to pretty much everyone.] This personal touch is once again Kapadia reminding us of how easy it is to lose touch with our valuable sense of reality and humanity; with celebrity culture continuing to gain more and more momentum in our society, we are constantly prodded and reminded to remember the dark consequences of such a life… it’s most definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.

Whilst there are tears aplenty (even though, according to my mum, I hid them quite well… the bonus of wearing glasses, eh?!), do expect some comic elements to shine through. Amy Winehouse’s sharp wit and cutting comments throughout certain archive interview footage provide some laugh out loud moments for the audience. You may even, at times, feel like you’re squirming in your seat during particularly painful images of a woman patently in trouble and remembering the copious amounts of jokes tossed around about her, but you will be guaranteed an immersive experience into a film that isn’t afraid to dive into the deep end of this tragedy; a reminder that we are all human and no-one should ever become simply a commodity. As the film ended, the cinema was left silent, and I was once again reminded of the sheer storytelling powers that documentaries can possess… when done right.