Amy

I saw Amy - Asif Kapadia’s documentary about Amy Winehouse, last week and I can’t stop thinking about it. Her songs have also been playing in a constant loop in my head ever since

The film is a fascinating portrait of a young woman with an enormous musical gift who gradually spiralled into self destruction.  It was horrifying to watch the transition of this outrageously talented, bright-eyed person into a tiny, haunted little husk.

When they announced the death of Winehouse in 2011, I remember remarking, rather callously, along with most people, that it wasn’t a great surprise. By then she had become a notorious, cartoonish figure of excess. Her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil was highly publicised; as was his imprisonment for drug possession. Footage of her, seemingly doped out of her head on drugs and drink was everywhere and she had become a figure of ridicule and censure. We all thought we knew her; knew all about her and the public exposure had reached saturation point.

What the film did, for me, though was to redraw the lines and show the human being behind the headlines, trite as that sounds. The film humanised Amy Winehouse.

The documentary has been both vilified and lauded by the critics, some saying that it is as bad as all the paparazzi coverage, rolled into one, others declaring it a masterpiece. Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s father, has disowned the film.

I didn’t feel that the film was voyeuristic. Rather; it actually reminded us of just how talented Amy was; what a unique singing voice she had and how intelligent she was (this last point definitely didn’t come across in later interviews - due in part to the fact that she was so self-effacing, quite aside from any chemical intervention).

There is no voice-over in the film, the filmmaker, Asif Kapadia, has already displayed his unique documentary making style in the award-winning film, Senna. It is largely made up of home video footage, off-screen interviews with friends and family and snippets of chat show appearances and live performances. It begins with a home video of fourteen-year old Amy at a friend’s birthday; all of them licking lollipops, fresh faced and mischievous. All is standard teenage fare, until they sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to their friend and Amy swiftly overshadows the others with her enormously rich, deep voice. Cue her friend going cross-eyed with a comedy ‘Oh god, look at her; showing off again!’ expression.

And, boom! This is the first glimpse of Amy, the ‘normal’ human being with an abnormal talent.

Early on someone asks her how she feels about the prospect of being famous, you get a chill down your spine as she replies;

“Oh God, I’d hate it; I think I’d go crazy!”

Young Amy explains how all the music when she was growing up was bland and derivative, all about people singing songs that someone else had written for them, so that’s when she started listening to the jazz greats. Bizarrely, I had forgotten, in amongst all the tabloid circus, that Amy played the guitar and wrote her own songs.

Amy Winehouse had such a distinctive sound and look that it would be all too easy to assume that she’d be styled by some Svengali figure in the background but here you are reminded of someone who made their own clothes and created their own, distinctive ‘look’. She seemed so strong and definite - so sure of what music she wanted to make, so how did she get annihilated? For me, this is the great paradox about Amy Winehouse; how could someone so intelligent and unique, spiral into a state of oblivion? Just fade away? I don’t know how much I personally pay into the trope of the tortured artist - too talented, too unique to live in this world. Here was somebody who seemed to be totally uncompromising, in her music and appearance, but who was dwindling away to nothing, literally, with her bulimia she was shrinking before our eyes. At the beginning of the documentary she looks relatively healthy (although, from what her mother says, her eating disorder had already kicked in by then) and by the end she is this tiny little husk of a woman. What her mother is heard saying in the documentary is; “Amy came to me and said - ‘Mum; I’ve discovered this great diet - I just eat whatever I want, then I make myself sick afterwards.”! Towards the end of the documentary, Amy’s doctor tells us that the Bulimia had weakened Any’s heart and it was this, in addition to alcohol poisoning, that had killed her. Many still assume that Amy Winehouse died of a drug overdose. Early on in the film, Amy’s mother says that Amy used to say to her; “Mum - you’re too soft, you should be more strict with us.” And you very much get the feeling that this is someone who has grown up without any boundaries in her life. Her mother said she assumed that the bulimia was a phase that would pass and, to be fair to her, I’m sure their are plenty of parents who intervene more in their children’s lives, who are unable to cure them of their eating disorders, but it did feel like one more thing that had gone on unchecked.

When Blake Fielder-Civil came into the frame, I felt the same, self-righteous flames of indignation I had felt, years ago, when learning about Sid and Nancy and Kurt and Courtney. The nasty villain comes onto the scene, introduces the talented genius to drugs and ruins their lives. Amy seemed to have been completely obsessed with the man and he comes across as a free-loading arse. But, if it hadn’t been him (who had introduced her to crack-cocaine and heroin) would it have just been someone else? Was she a person with a sense of emptiness who was always seeking something to fill the void? Someone who would have sought out and been attracted to other ‘tortured souls’?

It is understandable that Amy’s father has disowned the film; he certainly comes across as the villain of the piece - the man who stopped her going into rehab when her friends and former manager, Nick Shymansky, were desperate for her to go. An interviewee tells us that Mitch Winehouse said that she couldn’t go into rehab at that time as she had to go on tour. Those same self-righteous flames flare up again at this point.

A friend of mine met and spent some time with Amy Winehouse and said that she came across as a child who needed someone to say ‘no’ to her. Indeed, her song rehab; the song that propelled her into superstardom, provided her own gloomy epitaph.

At least the films reminds us that Amy was so much more than the drugs and the promiscuity and the husband in prison; it shows us the young woman with the huge, bright intelligent eyes; playful and charismatic; playing her guitar and listening to jazz. The woman with the incredible voice.