Amy is a deeply personal story about a beautiful young girl and her lifelong relationship to music. This purity eventually gets tarnished, and we’re there to watch it all go awry. For those to whom Amy Winehouse was nothing more than an incredible voice and a source for hacky late-night jokes, Amy is a clean slate. The documentary introduces us to this innocent young girl who is perfectly happy to just sing. She’s radiant, inspired, but somewhat wounded by the neglect in her childhood. This is where the teenage years take over, and a foreshadowing of what is to come becomes ever more clear.
Asif Kapadia, the director of the widely acclaimed Senna - another documentary about a life lost too soon - composes the film through private and public footage, entirely. This is quite effective and synchronized with one of the tragic themes of this film, as the more people know and want something from Amy, the further removed we physically are from her. When Amy is driving through England with her friends, playing small gigs and having a pure, joyous time, the handicam footage brings us in close, and we’re part of her inner circle. Eventually, there’s nothing but paparazzi footage, the trillion shutters of their cameras deafening the auditorium, and the flashes blinding her path.
In some sense, this is a fairly stereotypical story. It’s the prototypical tale of a celebrity’s rise and fall, through the most infamous of ways: sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The difference between most of those stories and Amy is that this tragedy plays like one we’re actively trying to stop before reaching that third act. Through guiding us along Amy’s childhood, her immense talent, and how beautiful the outlet of music can be for someone as troubled as her, Kapadia attaches us to so deeply that we can’t believe we have to let her go soon. By the end of this ride, the inevitable will have passed, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
As is the case with all of these cliché tales of downfall, Amy has its fair share of corrupting characters that find their way into our heroine’s heart. There’s an ignorant, greedy father, who cares not about his daughter’s health, but prioritizes her tour dates above anything. There’s the record label who’s asking for more material. And of course, there’s the Sid to Amy’s Nancy, in the form of a heroin addicted musician, who manipulates her life toward his own interests and redirects her path unnervingly effectively.
It’s difficult to say what she really wanted, but it's hard to fault her for being unhappy. We see her looking for a father figure, a soul mate, and sharing her talent with the world. But by the time her addictions have taken hold, we only see her desire to disappear. She wants to fade away, and it’s immensely sad to acknowledge. One particular scene has Amy and all of her friends, family members, and band members having a night of celebration in England to coincide with the Grammy awards ceremony in America. They’re watching a live feed, and Amy is clean at this point. She’s beautiful, and everyone’s happy. Her bad influence is in jail. Amy wins several Grammys, and everyone cheers, laughs, and cries of happiness. Amy’s friend comes onstage to have a moment with her, and Amy says, “this is so boring without drugs”. All of the wind is taken out of our sails. The bottom drops out, as if we actually believed this story could end differently.
