Score: 5/5
Director Asif Kapadia brings Amy Winehouse’s lyrics to life in “Amy” — a genuinely raw biopic of the singer’s complex life and tragic death. Thanks to a plethora of compiled footage, including homemade videos recorded by Winehouse and her mates, you aren’t just watching her story unravel on the screen, she’s showing it to you.
The film does well in incorporating Winehouse’s two recorded albums, “Frank” and “Back to Black.” Both brought her recognition and eventually stardom, near the end of her life. Whether you were previously familiar with her work or not, Winehouse’s vivacious personality, autobiographical lyricism and powerful voice grows on you throughout this film — thus making her emotionally unstable life your emotionally unstable viewing experience.
The story and footage are presented chronologically with commentary from the voices of people who were actively present in Winehouse’s life. The beginning depicts a young upcoming singer — headstrong and self-aware of her talents. Influenced by artists like Tony Bennett and Billie Holiday, Winehouse always had a soulful voice and jazzy cabaret style of performing. Unable to find new music that fit her, Winehouse began writing her own.
“I won’t write anything unless it was directly personal to me,” Winehouse said during an archived interview shown in the film. These words are proven to be true, as milestones and obstacles overcome throughout Winehouse’s career are retold through her music.
As the album “Frank,” was being written and recorded, Winehouse was just getting out of the house and beginning her long and complicated relationship with love. “Stronger Than Me” is a song about an older guy that Winehouse considered weaker than herself. “I Heard Love is Blind” is a song about cheating on her lover with a guy that resembled him. Despite her failed relationships with previous men, Winehouse’s life didn’t begin to take a turn for the worse until she met her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil.
Although not entirely clear in the film how she originally discovered heroin and crack cocaine, it began around the time she was married to Fielder-Civil – who had a previous history of using. Conflict and drama centered on her obsessive relationship with Fielder-Civil is what influenced Winehouse’s second and last album “Back to Black.” When Fielder-Civil went to jail, Winehouse’s personal issues intensified. And with the growing fame, Winehouse’s bad habits with alcohol and drugs became an apparent and withstanding issue.
Despite interventions held by her closest friends and professional medical advisement, Winehouse’s habits were taking complete control of her life and career. Footage of Winehouse at a festival performance in Serbia showed the singer so intoxicated that she sabotaged her own show and refused to sing. There aren’t many happy moments in the film after this happened. There was not anyone to make the singer stop.
Winehouse’s family structure was loose, growing up. Her mother’s pushover approach to parenting and father’s absence after the divorce gave Winehouse a lack of guidance that she would desperately need towards the end. During the song “Rehab” the singer makes a decision not to put her career on hold and enter into rehab because her father told her she didn’t need it. Eventually the song became her biggest hit, sending her all over the world for shows, interviews and T.V. appearances.
Winehouse was so numb to what was going on by the drugs she took that at the height of her career, when her idol Tony Bennett announced that she had received the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, she described the experience to her friend as “boring without drugs” – a heart-sinking moment.
With the pressure to continue performing “Rehab,” a song with lyrics that discouraged seeking help, Winehouse never received the help she needed. The drug use was a continuous and painfully grim cycle to watch. The growing fame and pervasion of her privacy by the media — Winehouse became increasingly distressed. Finally, on July 23, 2011, Winehouse was found by her bodyguard, dead in her bed from alcohol poisoning.
The only disappointment I felt as a viewer was over the potential that was lost with the death of this truly talented singer.