Movie Info
Movie Name: Amy
Studio: Film 4
Genre(s): Documentary
Release Date(s): May 16, 2015 (Cannes)/July 3, 2015 (UK/US)
MPAA Rating: R
She looks genuinely stunned that she won.
Amy Winehouse had a gift. With a deep soulful voice, she managed to blend classical jazz with modern lyrics. Amy’s problems grew with her fame. With the public watching, Amy began to meltdown and became a poster child for drug problems among the rich and famous. From her begins to the tragic end, Amy’s star burned bright.
Directed by Asif Kapadia, Amy is a documentary of the singer Amy Winehouse. Family of Amy Winehouse objected to their portrayal within the film. The movie was well received by critics and performed strongly in its limited release becoming the highest grossing British documentary of all time. The film won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.
She’s starstruck…
I like Amy Winehouse. I loved her voice and her style which was counter to many other singers of the time. I don’t however love her lifestyle and I have a hard time feeling sorry for people with money who have the opportunity to clean up and blow it. Amy shows a tragic character whose tragic ending could have been avoided.
The best parts of the video are seeing a young Amy Winehouse and hearing her sing. Though her voice isn’t as strong as it was around the recording of “Back to Black”, you see a vibrant and relatively happy young person with a great gift. Winehouse should have never been famous…it destroyed her.
Spiraling out of control…
I’m also not saying that she wouldn’t have gone down a path of self-destruction without fame. She seemed quite headstrong and didn’t have the support network she needed to keep her on track. In fact, that is where her story is tragic. As presented in the movie, Amy surrounded herself with enablers who didn’t get her the help she needed and pushed her harder (or got her involved in even worse drugs). Amy’s father (who objected to his portrayal) is shown to really be a hanger-on who enjoyed his daughter’s fame more than she did.
Society didn’t help Amy Winehouse. She became the butt of jokes about abuse and was more and more in the public eye as she spiraled out of control. Moments like her singing with Tony Bennett show Amy’s true joy at her desire to please. It is a slippery slope. The world was better with Amy Winehouse and her music in it, but if she had never reached fame, a life might have been spared.
