Amy – Movie Review V2.0 – By Fran Winston

Directed by: Asif Kapadia

Starring: Amy Winehouse

In cinemas July 24th

The story of Amy Winehouse is a modern tragedy that serves as a warning to all the wannabes chasing their 15 minutes via the X Factor or similar. But, as this insight film shows, behind the headlines and sensationalism, Amy was just an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent who was thrust into a spotlight that she didn’t know how to cope with.

Using previously unseen footage, Amy’s own words and interviews with those closest to her, director Asif Kapadia pieces together the singer’s story from her rather humble beginnings to her meteoric rise to fame. Although supremely talented stardom was never something Winehouse craved. Indeed given that she saw herself as a Jazz singer in the style of the old masters, which was a rather unpopular genre at the time, she never expected it either. All she wanted was to be able to play her music her way for an audience but her talent was such that her career quickly became a juggernaut. Writing from the heart her poignant songs struck a chord and when her second album Back to Black was released she became a global superstar.

However her personal life was in turmoil. She had started doing drugs, was drinking a lot and was heavily under the influence of her boyfriend and later husband Blake Fielder who introduced her to crack cocaine. Despite this the hits kept coming and the more famous she became the more the public was bombarded with photographs of a worse for wear Amy stumbling around London looking more like a homeless junkie than a music icon.

While Amy’s life and tragic death has been well documented it has never been told through her eyes. Kapadia doesn’t sugar coat anything and watching the fresh faced healthy youngster blossom into a truly unique artist is all the more heartbreaking because you know the inevitability of her fate. It is difficult to watch her decent into drug addiction – all the more so because so few people around her seemed to care as they relied on her for their own livelihoods. Despite being incredibly ill at times she was plonked out on a stage to perform often with horrifically embarrassing and messy results. In one instance she was passed out drunk and carried to a plane in her sleep to a venue for a gig despite the fact that she had explicitly stated she didn’t want to do that show.

Almost no one in her entourage comes out of this well. You can see the heartbreak on her face when her father arrives to see her with a film crew in tow as he makes a documentary trying to further his own career while Fielder is clearly only along for the ride and revels in the millionaire stars adoration. One of the most poignant moments comes when she is forced to watch her phenomenal Grammys win from the UK after visa issues over her drug use. When one of her heroes Tony Bennet comes out to present her award her reaction hits you like a kick in the stomach. She is completely and utterly gutted to be missing the chance to meet him (though they did later record together). Throughout all this there is the music and when you learn the stories behind some of the songs they become all the more moving.

Not an easy watch this is a well thought out documentary that doesn’t sensationalise its subject but rather sticks to the facts and lets the players do the talking themselves. Although you know the tragic end to her tale you find yourself willing a different outcome as you get to know her better. In the end you are left pondering what a senseless waste of a life her death actually was.

Her story is a cautionary one. The fact that she crammed so much into her 27 years is of little comfort when you consider all the things she could have accomplished had she lived. You don’t have to be an Amy Winehouse fan to enjoy this. It is simply the story of a girl who loved music and had a supreme talent for it who found herself thrust into a spotlight she didn’t know how to cope with.

An astonishingly thought provoking work, bring the tissues for this one. You’ll need them.