Amy
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Today is the ten year mark since Amy Winehouse’s passing. Here is my review of Amy: a documentary that aimed to honour the late singer through the good times and the bad.
When I was a teen, I’ll never forget that Amy Winehouse was promoted over in Canada as this problem rock star, whose album Back to Black was pegged as a means of getting more drug money. It was the mid 2000’s, and the media couldn’t get over its fixation on trying to label anyone with addictions as the enemy (since the war on drugs is oh so important, and scare tactics are the way to go with these matters; please sense my sarcasm). What was underneath this needless slandering was a lover of classic soul mixed with contemporary pop; Winehouse teamed up with Mark Ronson to make this groundbreaking release, that has influenced everyone from Adele to Duffy and beyond. It was only five years after Back to Black that we lost Winehouse, but that was all the time that now-adult me needed to realize just how merciless the world was about her; with a refusal to help, but an emphasis on gawking at her failures instead.
Ever since we lost her, it has felt like a travesty to me. Back to Black was only the beginning. Four years after her passing, Asif Kapadia released the documentary Amy: an in-depth look at her entire career. I do feel like we didn’t get the full story over the airwaves or TV stations here in North America, and Amy acts to rectify this really quickly. Seeing Winehouse before she became a global icon (particularly during her recording of her debut Frank) is crucial in this documentary. Part of the purpose of a film like this is to not do what fame did to her image. Amy seeks to understand Winehouse, and where it all went wrong. When the news depicted a singer that couldn’t care less, Amy shows Winehouse in tears, feeling like she messed up her one true chance to work with Tony Bennett later on in her career and in the film (he consoles her and assures her everything is okay). By starting with Winehouse exactly where she herself started, Amy is quick to humanize her. This isn’t a series of events to stare at. This is a life that has already received enough scrutiny.
Amy is a touching documentary that allows Winehouse’s footage to speak for itself.
One important factor here is how much Amy allows all of the footage of Amy Winehouse to speak for itself. There are hardly any cases where interviews or voice overs tell you how to feel about the clips you are watching, and any pieces of audible evidence usually feel congruent with the visual assembly of recordings. We see Winehouse’s rise, and even the good side of her Back to Black days that the press weren’t too keen on sharing upon release. We also see where her addictions began, and when the struggles started to take place. Due to the amount of depth that Amy goes (and it all feels genuine, and not constructed by Kapadia to make you believe untruths), you’ll be more understanding of how Winehouse got to where she ended up. It’s incredibly unfortunate, and Amy becomes a heartbreaking manifest of a superstar’s nightmares coming to life.
Amidst each triumph (like the Grammy she didn’t even expect to win) are moments of pain: seeing how loved ones in her life didn’t exactly help her situation is gruelling to bear. What’s especially telling are the myriad of things that word-of-mouth got wrong about her, even down to her biggest demons; Amy clears the air that her alcohol addiction was much stronger than the stigma of her drug usage, for instance. It’s insane how much of her initial legacy was plagued by the early days of online tabloid ragging, social media gossip, and fictitious mythologies caused by schoolyard chatter. Perhaps in a more sensitive time like the 2010’s, Amy Winehouse would have been better understood and respected. Well, Amy allows for this to happen.
Amy isn’t afraid to get into Winehouse’s darkest times, but it never forgets her moments to shine either.
Given the candidness of the footages presented, and what exactly Amy shows, the documentary is very understanding of its audiences, as well as the subject at the centre of the film. Some viewers will be fans, others may want to know the full story or are excited to see some of the shock material that rumours concoct (the latter will have a change of heart, and will leave far more different than how they went into the picture). Amy Winehouse feels like your best friend as well as a rockstar here. It’s a blessing to see her at her best, but a damn shame to witness her facing (and succumbing to) her challenges. Amy observes the late singer as a human first, and a legend second. Not once does the film feel like it was made to exploit her, or to make a quick buck off of her name. The entire film feels like Asif Kapadia trying to be the first filmmaker to speak on her behalf, and to do it right (before greedy pigs besmirch her name even further). He succeeds greatly, as Amy is a moving, haunting, and stunning documentary for the ages. Not many accounts both understand celebrities as both icons and humans quite like Amy does; it truly is the full picture of the rise and fall of a tortured soul that happened to make it big.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.