It's the style that sets this film apart. Asif Kapadia is the director, steady-handed and clear in his vision. We see Amy in her early years, her break into music, and her spiral down into a world of drugs and alcohol. What makes this film so memorable, so dreamlike, is the footage of Winehouse herself, shot after shot of home videos, still photos, digital camera selfies... We hear talking heads (as you would) of Amy's family and collaborators as they talk about the person they knew, and yet we never see their faces. It's only ever Amy. So it goes throughout the entirety of our story. It's clear that the filmmakers loved this musician, and in a way it should be overkill to show nothing but one woman for over 2 hours on screen. Never once are we bored.
As a subject matter, Winehouse has a Shakespearean quality to her. She achieved startling highs and lows before her death at the age of 27. With a beehive that made her instantly recognizable and a voice that harkened back to bubblegum ballads of the 1950's, it's no wonder that her talent shone so bright in the few years she was alive and famous. Despite her persona as a "bad girl" and an aura of recklessness, here was nonetheless a woman of immense gravitas in her work. When discussing her after her death, we hear Tony Bennett declare that she was one of the greatest of all time.
The music that fills the movie is also something that we instantly recall. The lyrics flash on the screen as we hear song after song from Back to Black, Winehouse's only second (and last) studio album. It's the album that won her 5 Grammys in a single night. Though her voice is so assured as an audio track, the footage of her filming and recording is just as startling. Here is a shy girl who only wants to get it right. When finishing a verse, she laughs to herself at how dark the lyrics sound. Music was her passion. Everything else was second.
We meet Amy's father and husband, two men who had an incredible amount of control over her life, two men who the filmmakers seem to want to accuse of bringing about her untimely death. The director stops short of pointing fingers, but we understand what is happening. These are two characters in themselves. Her father, a heavyset man who acts as a manager of sorts, 'leases' Amy out to paparazzi and the press in order to bring in extra cash. Her husband, a tattooed Londoner with a pension for drugs, was clearly adored by Amy and brought out aspects of addiction and drugs that are so often associated with the 'bad' parts of fame.
And the ending, perhaps the most heartbreaking finale to a movie that I can recall. With Amy's face impressed in our mind, we learn of the morning of her death when she was found with a blood alcohol content of 0.4. Days before she had called her childhood friends in order to try and mend a broken friendship. Amy could see her addiction to alcohol was pushing her loved ones away, but it only took a final night of mistakes to end it all. The police casually wheel out a stretcher with a bodybag on full display. Her fans outside are caught off guard. We see images of her funeral 3 days later, and the great sense of loss that was felt by not only her family, but the world.
The film loves its subject in a way that not many documentaries can lay claim. By the end we begin to love her too, even if the music or lifestyle of Amy Winehouse isn't our favorite. The greatness of AMY as a film is that it cuts deep to the heart of a human being. Yes, she was flawed, suffered problems and achieved fame too fast, but she was nonetheless a person who has hopes and dreams. To see a film that can convey such a truth with nothing more than home videos and candid interviews is startling. There is no new ground covered by these filmmakers. What they do instead is simply rewrite how a story can be told.
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