The turbulent and tragic life and death of soul singer Amy Winehouse is laid bare with shocking clarity in "Amy," a new documentary biopic directed by Asif Kapadia.
Winehouse, a British singer-songwriter, rose to international fame at age 23, winning five Grammys for her sophomore album, "Back to Black." Winehouse's enormous success came with equally massive personal problems that included alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, eating disorders and an inner circle of handlers, enablers and hangers-on who profited both from her life and her death by alcohol poisoning in 2011. It's a story as old as show business itself, but Kapadia gives it an immediacy and an unprecedented level of immersion and raw emotion that takes documentary storytelling to new heights.
The film opens with video footage of a 14-year-old Amy hanging out with her best friends, Juliette Ashby and Lauren Gilbert, at Lauren's birthday party. With no parents nearby the girls are what you might expect from teenagers; a little silly, a little sly, hamming it up a bit for the camera. Amy and Juliette decide to serenade Lauren with "Happy Birthday." The song starts out a little unsure but soon Amy's voice gets a little stronger and more confident with each note until it is just her alone in the frame, stealing the moment with that soulful voice that will one day make her famous. It is a sequence that sets the table for everything that follows: a raw, magical talent erupting from a common, vulnerable girl from north London.
You could not have scripted a better opening scene than this. Over the film's 128 minutes, Kapadia delivers moments like this over and over again, skillfully weaving footage that includes archival performance video, home movies and newsreels. The majority of the footage was shot by friends and family of the singer herself, and as perhaps the first star of the YouTube generation to die after self-documenting so much of her life, the film has an unprecedented cohesiveness to it that I've never seen in a documentary before.
There is a tendency even among good documentaries for directors to inject themselves into the film to some degree, whether it is in the form of voiceover or (even worse in my opinion) by appearing on camera. This is often necessary to provide transitions or frame the narrative for the audience, but every single time I find it calls attention to a filmmaker's editorial intentions. Kapadia's editorialization is in the cut, where it belongs. At no time did I get the sense of the director as a "character" in the film.
Instead, he builds his narrative by presenting clip after clip of his subjects describing their story in their own words. Then, to underscore his point, Kapadia presents shots of Winehouse performing, the lyrics printed on the screen. They say writers write what they know, and it's achingly obvious that Amy knew exactly what her demons were, what her failings were, and where they would lead her. Winehouse had huge personal problems stemming back to childhood, and was ill-prepared to deal with money and fame. "I don't think I'm gonna be at all famous," she says in the film. "I don't think I could handle it. I'd probably go mad." It is a theme repeated throughout the film, both in her words and her actions.
I am not an Amy Winehouse fan. I don't pay much attention to popular music these days, and when she first appeared on the scene all I knew of her was that she was that little tattooed British girl with a beehive who sang like a 60-year-old blues singer. Later, as she became the butt of jokes and tabloid covers, she seemed like yet another rock star squandering her talent on drugs and a facade of self-destructive defiance. Her signature hit, "Rehab," in which she famously refuses treatment because "daddy thinks I'm fine," looked like the height of bratty hubris. Right up until her death, the public persona of Amy Winehouse was an easy target for scorn and ridicule. I wondered if there was anything more to this woman than that persona that seemed to be her undoing.
This film answers that question for me. Her suffering was honest and heartfelt and there for the world to see in her art. That it was so obvious raises ugly questions about the people around her, all of whom come out of this film with their hands a little black. Amy Winehouse made many, many bad choices. Ultimately it may have been her choice of friends — a heroin-addicted husband, a promoter acting as her manager, a deadbeat dad who seems to enjoy his daughter's celebrity too much — that led to her death.
Even as a non-fan, I could not help watching this film and seeing all the bad choices unfold so plainly before me. Again and again, I asked myself why no one could bring themselves to stop this woman's downward spiral. Even knowing the outcome I found myself desperately wishing that someone — anyone — would do the right thing. It's a testament to the film that it made me care so much for a person that in retrospect, like her inner circle, I cared for far too little before she died.
"Amy" opens locally at Landmark's Keystone Art Cinema on Thursday, July 9th.
4.5 Yaps