Asif Kapadia, director of Senna and The Return, placed his cameras aside and worked on gathering clips of the singing sensation Amy Winehouse, producing an emotional and personal film biography titled Amy. Choosing between live footage as big as the Grammys, to home videos as personal as Amy singing Happy Birthday to a friend, Amy pulls us behind the red curtains and into the singer’s life. This documentary has no actors: the characters in the film are played by themselves, and even come with voiceovers and interviews from those close to the star including friends and family, Mos Def, Mark Ronson and Tony Bennett.
What do you think of when you think of Amy Winehouse? To director Kapadia, Amy is so much more than what the media presents and he decided to prove it. Yes, we see harrowing clips like Amy after a night of drinking; she’s in the foetal position and her eyes are open, but she’s not responding to the person videoing her. It takes a while to realise that by painting different shades of the pop star’s life onto the screen, Kapadia is showing every element of Amy’s life: the good, bad, and the downright ugly. Before, we see Winehouse’s energy, her independence, wanting to live in her own home to focus on her dream, music. We see her in love, faithful to someone she wants to be with for the rest of her life. It’s when he leaves her for another woman that the joy in her disappears, and she turns to alcohol to escape the feeling of hurt. So Kapadia doesn’t just show what happened, he shows why.
Everyone has that feeling of gloom – we all know what happens to Amy, but it’s never mentioned. The only clues we receive are from the voice overs recounting what Amy said, it indicates something isn’t right about Winehouse: “Mum, I can eat whatever I want and I can just throw it back up afterwards”, and [at the Grammys after seeing her hero on television introduce her] “in truth, this isn’t fun without the drugs”.
This morbidity doesn’t come all at once, but is gradual, showing the deterioration of Winehouse in a subtle but very clear way. There seems to be one focal point before it all begins, one single thread that Amy’s demise hangs on: her relationship with men. Winehouse is presented as boisterous, demanding and mischievous, but somehow it makes her loveable. Her boyfriend Blake on the other hand doesn’t skirt on the surface and he asks her why she acts like this. The popstar reveals how she’s been this way ever since her Dad left. Blake relates this to his own father and there is such beauty in how the two understand one another.
We see, however, that relationships like this fall apart. When Blake leaves her, she buries herself deep into her addictions and pushes her friends away. Some may argue the portrayal of this descent may be dragged out and too lengthy, but what it allows Kapadia to build on is vulnerability. We see Winehouse in front of the paparazzi, walking around lost and confused, not knowing what to do. We’re shown scenes of comedians making fun of her, and while many of us would have laughed along before, we now we see it as brutal bullying. We see how defenceless she is. Ultimately what Kapadia gives us is one of the strongest things a film director could: perspective. For this reason, Amy should be top of your must-see list.
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