Movie Review: "Amy"

Amy (2015)

Documentary
R

5 Stars out of 5

Director:                                              Asif Kapadia
Film Editing                                         Chris King
Music                                                   Antonio Pinto

Amy Winehouse                                Herself
Lauren Gilbert                                   Friend
Juliette Ashby                                    Friend
Nick Shymanski                                 Friend and Manager
Tyler James                                        Himself
Mitch Winehouse                             Father
Salaam Remi                                      Himself
Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def)                 Himself
Tony Bennett                                     Himself
Blake Fiedler                                      Husband

 

What forces combine to enable a young person to grow into a musical prodigy, and what other forces collude to destroy that same life through a combination of alcohol, drugs and bulimia? These questions kept burning through my mind as I watched the 2015 winner for Best Documentary, “Amy”. Even though, I didn’t really get answers to these questions or perhaps even to the more basic one of who Amy Winehouse was by the time of her death from a heart attack in July, 2011, I still came away from this film with a sense that her story as seen from without, if not from within, was as well told as it could be. Whether you are a fan of Amy Winehouse’s music (and I must say prior to watching this movie, I was not), you will be moved by this very sympathetic exploration of her rise and fall.

The movie starts off non-promisingly via the use of several home movies from the late 90’s. The endless bouncy movement of the camera could induce sea sickness in any one. And yet, and yet how lucky we as a member of the audience are that her friends Nick Shymanksy or Juliette Ashby took the time to take these home movies and then to share them with director Asif Kapadia. We are further lucky that Kapadia had Chris King as his film editor. Between the two of them, they weave together a narrative of Ms. Winehouse’s life. The opening scene of her singing “Happy Birthday” to her friend Lauren Gilbert might for any other fourteen year old be but a minor moment, but by the time the film closes, you may think back as I did to this scene and wonder how did this young woman go so far off the tracks of her life.

Kapadia has gathered a massive collection of archival and filmed videos of Ms. Winehouse as she begins her career as a Jazz singer. He casts the story in the mode of the singer telling her own story via the various interviews she gave as well as over 100 interviews that Kapadia conducted with those around her. That she was a musical genius seems to be in no doubt as Kapadia has such musical luminaries as Mos Def and Tony Bennett (and many others between them on the musical and social spectrum) comment on her. They universally admire her work, and it would seem from the film universally worried about her.

Ms. Winehouse evidently began her “special diet” while still an adolescent; of course, as a teenager, she likely had no idea that bulimia was also a form of addictive behavior and was certainly not special in any positive manner. Why she chose to lose so much weight or why her mother took no action to intervene is not in the least made clear. She was clearly loved by her mother and friends. Her father and mother split up while she was still quite young, and while her father did not play a large role in her younger years, she seemed to love him up to the day she died. The movie implies she was willing to do many things she really did not want to do (for example the aborted concert in Bulgaria three months before her death) in an effort to please him. Her father and certainly her husband Blake Fiedler played a role in her later substance abuse. Her father did not seem to be the cause of why she turned to alcohol and drugs, but he most certainly played no role in encouraging her to seek treatment. And the role Fiedler played in getting her on cocaine and heroin is not only, not denied by Fiedler, but in fact appears to be a complete non-issue to him. Like her father, he also played absolutely no role in helping her get healthy. Her childhood and later friends try repeatedly to help her, but they simply did not have the suasion of her father or husband.

Her story is heart wrenching, but it is also enlightening to a great degree. Most people in America in the early 21^st century fully recognize that alcoholism is a kind of disease; they may not understand it to be a disease in the sense of a communicable disease, but they understand that the patient is ill and not morally bankrupt. I wonder though how thoroughly this concept is understood by the average person not intimate on a first hand basis with an addict. I may have for example an intellectual understanding of how certain drugs like alcohol, the opiates, or methamphetamine literally re-wire the human brain. But what do I really think when I see an alcoholic passed out in the park? Do I look at them with pity for their situation or perhaps with pity for their lack of will power? Watching this movie took me back to Jack Lemmon’s and Lee Remick’s characters in 1962’s “Days of Wine and Roses”. This excellent but fictional tale is as sad as any you are likely to see come out of Hollywood on the subject of alcoholism. However, “Amy” is about a real person, one with a problem that she could not fight against and win. The pain in her eyes near the end is more painful than almost anything I have seen. I think again back to those same eyes when she was fourteen and wonder again at how she fell.

This film is not perfect. I really wished I could via the film puzzle out why Ms. Winehouse turned to bulimia and alcohol. I can guess why she took the path to drugs as the pressure of her growing fame grew too great, or the criminal influence of her husband. I still don’t really understand how she or anyone in a safe and loving home turns in such directions. Despite these unmet wishes, I still strongly recommend this movie to any adult with any interest in Jazz or the human condition.