Asif Kapadia's Amy comes to a head in a beautiful sequence that only lasts for a couple of minutes. Near the end of her short life, 28-year-old Amy Winehouse recorded with then 85-year-old Tony Bennett. Kind and graceful to her, he makes her feel welcome. When Amy walks off in frustration saying she's singing badly, he gently brings her back and says that she's doing it well, but that they'll do the song a number of times and it will keep getting better.
It's a touching moment in the film's rich two hours.
One of the most damaging events in Winehouse's life came when she was nine and her father deserted the family. He returned eventually, but as the film shows, Mitch Winehouse loved the gravy train and exploited his daughter shamelessly. It's maybe cheap psychology, but Winehouse searched most of her life for a decent father – and there he is in the loving figure of Tony Bennett, a man who also recognized that she was one of the very greatest jazz singers, of the caliber of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
On Terry Gross' Fresh Air, Nick Shymansky, Any Winehouse's one-time manager, said he'd worried that a film made so soon after her death might lack perspective, and Amy does have a short and undeveloped historical vision. But it compensates with immediacy, and it has a lot of power. When enough time has passed and someone wants to film a more pensive evaluation of the life of Amy Winehouse, this picture will be an essential resource.
It turns out there's a ton of film of Amy Winehouse, starting from childhood home movies. One way to look at how this movie uses that material it is to see the slow downward progression from bright playfulness to the misery that dominated the end of her life – the typical smeary home movies of children, Winehouse as a teenager onstage in clubs, then the dreadful boyfriends, and so on.
Later, the footage of Winehouse at the infamous concert in Belgrade where she staggered around the stage -- unable to perform -- is ghastly and sad, as are the shots of the police taking her body from her home in London.
Another way to see the footage is that it documents the career of a unique performer.
Winehouse didn't present a corporate entertainment package like Brittany Spears or Taylor Swift, with precise staging and carefully crafted sexuality. There's nothing canned about Winehouse. For one thing, Any Winehouse had that emotionally and musically textured voice that goes right to your heart and gut.
Until near the end of her life, Winehouse never changed her style of clothing, which is far from Disney-like packaging. She didn't change her heavy eye makeup either, or her lipstick, tattoos and piercings. She never got her teeth fixed or made her heavy working class accent more presentable or acceptable.
Amy gets the raw complexity of this young woman. Her lyrics are prosaic and adolescent; they can be non-poetic, but the power of her range and phrasing knocks you out. At the same time, she's both an inarticulate kid and the great jazz singer that Tony Bennett adored.
As story, Amy is undistinguished. The downward spiral of a singer is an old cliché of the movies. But the intimate, sometimes raucous footage of Amy Winehouse and the recorded interviews take the film deeper than you might expect.
When fame hits, the assault of press and photographers becomes unbearable. Winehouse said she'd dump it all just to be able to walk down the street in peace. Using clips from Jay Leno or David Letterman typically shows someone's rising fame. In Amy, it's the sight of established, authoritative men mocking the troubles of a young woman. Her pain becomes their scornful comedy.
Any Winehouse was vulnerable and couldn't hack the celebrity world with its slick compromises. This documentary shows how she was ridiculed for that, and how all of us are complicit in the cruelty.
