'AMY' Documentary Explores The Winehouse We Never Knew

By Selena Fragassi in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 10, 2015 6:00PM

When Amy Winehouse died four years ago, the initial shock was tempered by a looming sense that we all knew this was going to happen. The soul singer’s final days and months were erratically cataloged in a mess of photos and tabloid headlines detailing her frail state, already ravaged by years of alcohol and drug abuse and soap-operatic relationships. Her life, much like her death, felt like a chess game with an unintended pawn—more than any other entertainer of her era, Amy Winehouse was fame’s moving target.

Winehouse foreshadows several times that fame would likely kill her in AMY an intimate and tragic documentary released today about the life and art of the enigmatic singer, directed by BAFTA and Sundance winning director Asif Kapadia. While we know the ending of the movie going into AMY it’s the first time we get to know the beginning and the middle parts that created the iconic character with the winged eyeliner, heavens-high bouffant and that unforgettable voice.

AMY opens with home video of 14-year-old Winehouse sultrily singing “Happy Birthday” to her childhood friend Lauren Gilbert—the moment the star was born. Winehouse’s voice, even at such a young age, sounded much older, grittier, experienced than she was, and there is the sense that her team made her catch up all too quickly.

Part of that hinges on her father, Mitch Winehouse, the unofficial protagonist of the film who both inspired and somewhat detoured Amy’s career. The footage explores the implications of Mitch’s romantic affairs on his impressionable young daughter, his reluctance to have Amy commit to much-needed rehab at the height of her career and his shark-ish money-making schemes, like inviting cameras to the family’s private island vacation for exclusive footage.

These parts are probably a reason the parents, including mom Janis, distanced themselves from the project. Instead, Kapadia focused on revealing interviews with Amy’s other inner circles, such as her childhood friends like Gilbert and Juliette Ashby, her first manager Nick Shymanksy and producer and confidant Salaam Remi, all of whom never appear on camera but give detailed accounts of who the real Amy was—a tender-hearted virtuoso who was charming and witty when she was lucid and a human being who suffered from depression, bulimia and addiction in her darkest days. AMY begs to ask why that line couldn’t have been drawn in the media while she was living, and in a way becomes atonement for any guilt felt in watching it unfold. By the end, there’s a feeling that Winehouse was finally given the time she deserved to tell her story.

While Kapadia’s film is enriching, it is not perfect. Much of the reels involving Janis and Mitch and nefarious boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil is sourced from various British documentaries and specials posthumously compiled while much of AMY's editing, especially in the second half, continues the pervasive paparazzi style that often makes it uncomfortable to watch. Perhaps that was Kapadia’s intent, but there’s a very sensitive line to distinguish between exploratory and exploitative that felt blurred here.

Where the film really shines though is in its characteristic to let Amy’s music do the talking from beyond the grave. Through lyric sheets panning across the screen and numerous live performances, many of them never-before-seen, the movie creates its own soundtrack and lets viewers into the personal stories behind many of the deep cuts, especially the love-torn songs on Back To Black, her final album that won five Grammys and cemented Winehouse’s status as one of the definitive voices of her generation. Revisiting the material in AMY only serves to strengthen the message while quieting the “what ifs” about what she could have done with more time because her time is still so very much right now.

AMY opens in select theaters nationwide today.