Amy
Directed by Asif Kapadia. Opens Friday at Tampa Theatre and Muvico Sundial. Sneak preview July 9 at 9:45 p.m. facebook.com/AmyFilm.
Hauntingly visual and voyeuristic, Amy ambles along with a jazzy swagger, like its subject’s knobby-kneed walks of shame. Not overridden with voiceovers and interviews — just enough to provide insight — the documentary is one long behind-the-scenes video triptych of Amy Winehouse’s career.
Director Asif Kapadia, known for his 2010 film Senna — about the life and death of Brazilian motor-racing champion, Ayrton Senna — delivers an intimate view of Winehouse, taking us from her fresh-faced years at nearly empty lounges to a Belgrade stadium, where she inebriatedly refused to perform in front of thousands of fans, and to her final days in 2011, when she died of alcohol poisoning and bulimia complications just shy of 28.
Box office-wise, the film got off to a booming start this past holiday weekend, earning $222,500 from just six screens in major markets — the highest among all releases over the weekend and one of the highest limited debuts of the year. Critically, Amy has done well, too, with a 97 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In one instance, Winehouse becomes hospitalized with cocaine, heroine, alcohol and crack cocaine in her system, but dad Mitchell pushes her to continue touring. In 2009, after her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil — often called Amy’s “Bobby Brown” — is arrested on drug charges, Winehouse enjoys a respite in St. Lucia and stops using hard drugs. To her noticeable frustration, Amy’s dad shows up with a camera crew for a reality show concept. In one scene, he admonishes his daughter on camera for being impolite to her fans when they ask her to pose with them in a photo. Amy says to her father, “Dad, you don’t want to make a mug of me,” she says. “Be nice to me on camera.”
To Kapadia's credit, he allows stories to unfold without biased intrusion. Anyone with half a brain can tell Winehouse’s parents’ did care and intervened on many occasions just from watching Amy. Kapadia doesn’t villainize them, but he does leave the question hanging in the air, “Can more have been done?”
What was behind Winehouse’s deeply rooted issues? That is a question that could use more speculation by Kapadia. We learn a little about her childhood traumas. Her father cheats on her mother and her parents divorce when she is 9. She goes from sweet to incorrigible at that point, raised without boundaries almost, but that story could be told of half of the American population born after 1960. We don’t get too deeply into her toxic love life, wounded self-esteem and vanity issues; she snubbed her nose at Spice Girls celebrity but got breast implants in 2009. The bipolarity of Winehouse, the contradictions are pretty much overlooked, as is the dynamic between her and her best friends — including first manager Nick Shymansky — who were dissed in her hit tune "Rehab." (Actually, you can learn more about all of the above in the recent Fresh Air interview with Kapadia and Shymansky.)
But Winehouse was much more than a trainwreck, and Amy wins us over when we’re reminded of the vocalist's charisma and immense talent. Two of the film’s sweeter moments involve one of Amy’s childhood idols, Tony Bennett. Watching the Grammys broadcast from a pub in London with friends and family, she beams like a 5-year-old when she sees Bennett presenting the award nominations for 2008 Record of the Year with Natalie Cole. The sheer joy in her face is contagious when she wins.
During her end days, Winehouse recorded the tune “Body and Soul” with Bennett for his 2011 album of duets. In the film we see the historic session. As soon as Winehouse starts singing with Bennett, she gets the jitters, starts spiraling and tries to walk out. Bennett stops her and reassures her, reminding her she’s got it. The exchange offers a touching glimpse of Winehouse’s fragility and Bennett’s graciousness. He goes on to praise her for having an old soul and being the only singer of her generation who really knows how to sing jazz the way it’s meant to be sung.
The film needs more of Winehouse’s musical identity, like when Questlove reminisces about Amy approached him to form a supergroup with her, Mose and Rafael Saddiq: “ I thought I had my doctorate in jazz, but there was so much more I could have learned,” the Roots drummer said.
Amy Winehouse resonated when she performed. She found joy in those clever heartbreaking tunes of hers — her healthiest addiction. Kapadia lures us into the singer’s musical psyche with superb footage of early performances, artfully adding the lyrics in the margin so we can sing along. Those words provide Amy’s most revelatory moments.
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2015.