There's Something About Amy

Confession:  before seeing Asif Kapadia’s documentary, Amy, I had no previous knowledge of Amy Winehouse’s music or career.  I remember hearing stories in the media of her death at an early age, succumbing to the excesses of fame and hard-living.  After watching this documentary, I was completely won-over by both Winehouse as a person and her music.  Winehouse’s voice and style of music seem to recall that of jazz icons of yesterday, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday while always maintaining something completely contemporary, unique and audacious.  As tragic as Winehouse’s story is, the documentary never fails to highlight the shear exuberance of her music while perfectly capturing her charismatic personality.

The film shows that Winehouse was always a drinker and liked to party.  As she became famous however, she slowly began to desire the annihilation of her very self.  Under the unfortunate influence of her boyfriend, Blake Fielder, she turned to crack cocaine and heroin and found that these drugs could erase the pain of stardom and make her “disappear” existentially.  Something deeply ingrained in her psyche had to be the source of this desire, but Winehouse admits that she was never abused in her early life.  She hints at one point that her father leaving her mother when Amy was at an impressionable age and not being present for her may have contributed to this unstable behavior later on.  Interestingly, during her blossoming musical career, the film shows that she allowed her father back into her life.  I believe this speaks to the dynamics of the family in current society.  For one, Amy’s relationship with her previously absent father demonstrates Amy’s forgiving and perhaps needy nature.  It also is a demonstration of the idiosyncratic, fluid, and ever-changing character of family life in 21st century Western society.

The film makes use of old video footage of Amy in her youth in the attempt to paint a contrasting picture between the starry-eyed, innocent girl with huge vocal talent and the emaciated, wasted mega-star she would become only a short while later.  The home video footage at the beginning of Winehouse’s career gives the viewer an intimate connection with the singer, almost as though we know her personally.  There is a total absence of traditional documentary’s talking head style interviews.  The use of talking head interviews would not have made this feeling of connection so palpable.  As the film and Winehouse’s career develops the home video footage starts to wane.  This strategy has an effective way of making Winehouse seem increasingly disengaged, alienated and distant from the viewer, much in the same way that she became to her friends, family and loved-ones.   As the home video footage recedes, the film begins to make use of the media’s footage of her more prominently.  This further reinforces the distancing strategy that Kapadia uses to stress the widening gulf between the familiar, intimate nature of Amy’s life in the earlier parts of the film and the estranged, alienated figure that Winehouse would become towards the end of her life.

In the absence of the talking head style interviews, Kapadia chooses instead to make use of constant voice-over by Amy’s friends, colleagues and family.  This is also an unusual technique because it is used as a replacement of the traditional documentary’s voice-of-God, omniscient narrator.  A traditional narrator would have been more clinical and cold.  The recounting by Amy’s loved ones and acquaintances adds a warm, pacifying dynamic to the film, stressing the strength of her bonds and interpersonal relationships.

Of course, one must not forget the music.  Winehouse could be considered an “old soul.”  The personal nature of the lyrics of Winehouse’s music almost makes one uncomfortable in its intensity and honesty.  This discomfort is balanced by the sultry tonality of her vocal stylings and the soothing, tranquilizing sound of her melodies and backing instrumentation.  Interestingly, at many times throughout the film, lyrics are superimposed on the screen or revealed through shots of written lyrics on paper.  This stress on the words over the music serves to highlight the strength of Winehouse as a lyricist and songwriter while demonstrating the aforementioned, highly-personal nature of the lyrics.

Was Winehouse’s spiral into self-destruction the result of the media’s constant attention or was the media and paparazzi simply focusing and feeding on Amy’s own self-caused damage?  Was her need for self-annihilation independent of her being forced into the international spotlight?  I believe that the two were interdependent and fed off of one another.  Yes, she had self-destructive impulses to begin with as a result of feeling abandoned and from bad influences, but the media’s glare intensified these tendencies and exacerbated her need for self-destruction.  It is this symbiotic relationship that brought about her demise.  One can only speculate on the artistry she could have achieved had she lived a longer life.