Amy - The Girl Behind the Name

This is a fascinating and heartbreakingly sad and dark depiction of the life of a brilliant singer. It's a touching testament to Winehouse's career, relationships and ups and downs, and it takes a very dramatic but powerful approach to telling the story in Asif Kapadia's inventive documentary style.

Kapadia directed my favourite film of all time, Senna, which I have, after countless viewings, found to be incredibly powerfully emotional, consistently exciting and, most of all, stunningly original.

Originality is a hard thing to come by in the documentary genre, but Kapadia, in both Senna and Amy, uses this fascinating style of presenting a documentary in the form of a narrative drama to make it a more engrossing and captivating experience, something that works so well, and makes for an absolutely brilliant watch.

The story of Amy Winehouse is a bittersweet one, and this film does that reality justice. On the one hand, it does a fantastic job of showing her fun-loving and upbeat personality in the years before the health problems started, and it really gives you a lasting image of a completely different Amy Winehouse to the one that almost lived in infamy towards the end of the 2000s.

However, on the other hand, this film is quite brutal and dark to watch due to its very realistic depiction of the impact of drugs, drinking and bad relationships on her life. In the second act of the film, Kapadia does a stunning job of showing how Winehouse's life completely disintegrated due to all of these problems, and it is a truly striking thing to watch.

Despite the darkness of that part of the story, one thing that remains positive throughout is how the film celebrates Winehouse's incredible talent for jazz singing. It interlinks the events of her life with her earliest and most famous singles and turns them into strongly symbolic demonstrations of her deepest emotions and thoughts.

Overall, this is a brilliantly intriguing documentary that will move you to the core. It uses a fantastically inventive narrative style to create a powerful story that shows so clearly the bittersweet nature of the life of an amazing singer.

www.themadmovieman.com

The cover story of this week's edition of music magazine NME is: 'Who killed Amy?' It would have been a perfect title for this superb documentary. I went to see it, hoping it would answer two questions. One: could Amy Winehouse's death have been prevented in any way? Two: if so, by whom? The film provides crystal clear answers to both questions. One: no, it probably couldn't have been prevented - at best it could have been postponed. Two: several members of her entourage have probably contributed to her downward spiral. Her father, who wasn't there when he should be and was there when he shouldn't. Her husband, who encouraged her drugs abuse and seems to be an utterly despicable person. And the press, who relentlessly haunted her and enjoyed every misstep in her life. But the documentary also makes one thing very clear: in the end there's only one person responsible for Amy Winehouse's death: Amy Winehouse.

Apart from providing a stunning insight in Winehouse's short life and career, 'Amy' is also a great movie from a cinematographic perspective. The unique feature is that it consists almost entirely of existing footage. It's absolutely incredible what the film makers (with the help of the Winehouse family) have unearthed. Lots of home videos, from her youth as well as from her later life, interviews, recording sessions, telephone conversations, even voice mail messages. Sometimes it almost feels uncomfortable to view images, clearly made for personal use, on a giant screen. But they are extremely revealing. There were numerous moments when I felt like saying: wow! The very first moments of the film are almost worth the ticket price. We see an amateur home video of a birthday party: 14 year old girls giggling and fooling around, until suddenly one of them starts singing 'Happy Birthday' with a voice and technique that seem to belong to Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald. We also see Winehouse commenting after her first single has sold 800 copies, we see a hilarious scene during a holiday in Spain, but we also see her waving a bag of marijuana in front of the camera, we see her arguing with her father, visiting her incarcerated husband, and in one haunting scene, lying on the floor in what seems a drunken stupor.

'Amy' tells an extremely sad story. It's told in all honesty: it shows how incredibly talented Winehouse was, and how dedicated to her music, but also how insecure and self-destructive. When one of her childhood friends tells how she felt when, in the end, Winehouse wasn't her old self anymore, she almost starts sobbing in the microphone. I have no doubt each and every one in the cinema theatre felt the same way after seeing this film.

I remember when Amy Winehouse died back in 2011 it had a certain inevitability about it yet was still shocking and very sad. The media had made a meal out of her problems documenting them at every given opportunity and her increasingly emancipated appearance was publicised for all to see, courtesy of the lowlifes of the paparazzi. Hers was life in a goldfish bowl by the end and for a person who never wanted fame in the first place; this made her life all the more difficult. What complicated matters so fatally was that in amongst all of this, she had a predisposition for drink and drugs. The combination sent her spiralling on a downward trajectory.

This documentary about her has been made by Asif Kapadia who directed the film Senna (2010) which remains one of the most highly respected documentaries of recent years. When you consider that that film was also about someone at the top of their field who died young in a dramatic and sudden manner, you could say that there are some similarities between both stories. But in reality the Amy Winehouse story is a much darker one, with its central character going on an extended path of self-destruction. And one in which we in the audience know only too well how it ends. The film is made up of home video and TV clips of Winehouse and fills in details with recollections of people who were close to her in the form of voice-overs, as opposed to a more traditional talking heads format. After the release of her definitive album Back to Black in 2006, Winehouse basically retreated and conducted next to no interviews which of course posed the film-makers some problems and the effect is that as the film goes on she becomes increasingly remote and we feel like we know her less.

The contrast between the Amy of the early years to the one latterly seen is pretty pronounced. Her appearance became more intense and she quickly covered herself with an assortment of harsh tattoos. This phase coincided with her downward spiral with drink and drugs. It seems pretty clear that her attachment to her husband Blake Fielder was inextricably linked to this. He came across as a hanger-on who led her onto hard drugs and who then had little self-interest in getting her off them. The problem was that she loved him and it was this that made the situation so destructive. Throughout the film, as her songs play, her lyrics are displayed on screen and it is obvious that much of her music was based on highly personal emotional songs that constantly were sourced from her experiences in relationships. So much of her success was derived from this well of emotion but it was one that could equally destabilise her. This was only exacerbated by her bouts of depression and her problematic relationship with her dad.

There is no getting away with the fact that this is a sad story; one that is all the more shaming when you consider that it played out so visibly in the public eye. But the public eye is very uncaring unfortunately and all too often empathises when it is far too late. But this film also captures the voice and the humour, so integral to Amy Winehouse. And so while it is impossible to ignore the tragedy, the beauty is here too. This was, after all, a very singular artist whose roots were in jazz, which is hardly a music for lightweights. Amy Winehouse was a proper talent who made music entirely on her own terms. If I was to criticise mildly it would be to say that the film itself might be marginally too long and perhaps goes over some ground more than it has to. But mainly this is ultimately a very worthy attempt to tell what is a complex and contrasting story to the screen with all its darkness and light.

As the public we only see the picture that is given us, but Asif Kapadia's new movie, Amy, shows us the behind-the-scenes of extremely talented star Amy Winehouse. We catch glimpses of young teen Amy, smiling to the camera. We watch Amy enjoy making her music. We replay her breakthrough. And we see the horrific reality of the consequences of her fame, and the influence of the press. This masterpiece is an eye-opener and shows the truth behind the glamour of the red carpet.

Even though most people know the story of Amy, it has never been retold in this setting. Archive footage which makes the movie real, raw and honest. Commentary of people who have participated in Amy's life, and they tell the story as how they knew her, and not how the press thought they knew her. We get to know the fragile girl who "just wanted to be loved" and see her path towards her inevitable end, with participation of her destructive relationships as her absent father, her bad-influence husband and her addiction.

While we see the changes in Amy we see the changes in her music. Her music started off as a product of her personality, her smoky jazz, "I only write a song if it really means something to me" - Amy. But in the end her level of personality in songs has sunken just as much as her participation in shows. She couldn't handle the load up of all her personal problems and became only a mere shadow of the emotionally powerful chanteuse she once was. Her journey is an emotional roller-coaster of the bright Amy as we see her in the beginning of the movie and the addicted woman who just couldn't let go of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine and alcohol. They tried to make her go to rehab, but all she said was "No, no, no".

Although the emotional load up of this documentary is great, I do feel that it does show a selective side of the story. After I had seen the movie, I had the idea that everything that had come over Amy Winehouse was the result of her husband, parents, and the press. It is being presented as if Amy is a doomed angel because she is surrounded by the devil. This might be a peaceful thought for her close friends but I don't think it fully represents the truth.

But I am still amazed and overwhelmed by Amy's story and shocked how she went from the passionate and bright teenager she was, into a story about brilliance, depression, exploitation and addiction.

This movie is just as much as a worthy remembrance to Amy Winehouse as a representation of many celebrities who suffered from the pressure, the press and the fame-industry.

Mare P.

This is one of the best documentaries that I have seen because its not meant to be flashy and "entertaining". It is a very honest and emotional movie with personal clips that show her rise to fame and her feelings about it. One of the biggest reasons why I loved it was because all the different sides of her life were presented in the movie. I loved how all the opposing sides agreed to come together and make this amazing movie. Her parents, managers, ex husband were all included, even though they probably hate one another in real life. I also liked how they included full songs in the documentary. I was a big fan of Amy Winehouse before but this movie made me appreciate her personality and clever poetry. Highly recommended. trust.