Photo courtesy of the Savannah Film Festival
Written by Cherrelle M. Rand
I watched as society maliciously tore Amy Winehouse apart. So, when I entered the Lucas Theater where Asif Kapadia the director of “Amy” was screening his documentary for the Savannah Film Festival, I suspected to see the same treatment. I was not alone in this feeling. Amy’s closest friends were too. “Are you going to tell the truth about the real Amy?” they asked when Kapadia visited them, “Or are you just going to make fun of her like everyone else?” He tells the truth.
In London 1998, Amy sings “Happy Birthday” to a friend. It’s in these sweet archival footages and images—along with the poignant ones—that track the rise and eventual downfall of her life. We follow along with Amy from her first gigs all the way to her untimely death. We see images of pieces of paper where she scribbled down lyrics that she wrote. We watch again as she battles with depression, drug addiction, alcohol abuse and an eating disorder (which most were unaware of). This time it was handled in a delicate, mature and honest way.
We finally get a glimpse of the softer and funnier side of Winehouse. “His album’s called what goes around comes around?” Amy said, as she pokes fun of the famous boy-band-gone-solo artist Justin Timberlake as the nominees for records of the year are called.
Then of course there’s the music. “I would pay her to come sing because the sh*t moves me,” says Salaam Remi, the songwriter who inspired and pushed Amy to write her own songs. Her voice gives you chills and caresses at the same time. The raw tracks from the songstress were specifically picked out and if Kapadia hadn’t this film would have failed.
But we also watch with great difficulty and frustration as every key player in Amy’s life fails her. Her father (Mitch Winehouse) tells her that she doesn’t need to go to rehab though she clearly does. Her husband (Blake Fielder) provides her with drugs (heroin, cocaine and meth) even at an intervention her friends set up, her manager (Raye Cosbert) pushes her to do tours and gigs that she doesn’t want to do, and her mother (Janis Winehouse) admits that she brushed aside Amy’s confession that she would purposefully make herself throw up. And the people who do truly want to help her are pushed out of the inner circle.
The groundbreaking documentary sets the bar high for ones to come. It will make you angry listening to the comedians making a mockery of her drug addiction and bulimia and watching the aggressive paparazzi crowd around her home, invading her space. Yet it will make you laugh because it shows the life of a beautiful, loving and vulnerable talented artist who was reluctant of fame and who left this world too soon.
This documentary opened a window and reveals our treatment of not just celebrities but of people in general especially those who struggle with substance abuse and what “Amy” showed us was how human she was and how inhuman we all were.
