WHERE TO SEE IT
Opens July 10; playing at AMC Phipps Plaza, Lefont Sandy Springs and Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.
One of the saddest, sweetest moments in “Amy,” the visceral documentary about British soul-pop singer Amy Winehouse, comes with a Grammy win.
In 2008, Winehouse, by then a ubiquitous presence thanks to “Rehab,” stands with her band in a London club, watching a live remote as her idol, Tony Bennett, announces her name as the record of the year winner.
Winehouse’s inked eyes widen in genuine disbelief as she is quickly mobbed by her bandmates and parents in a celebration of her remarkable breakthrough in the U.S.
Minutes later, with the Grammy cameras turned off, Winehouse quietly mumbles to her childhood friend, Juliette Ashby, “This is so boring without drugs.”
That sigh of a statement epitomizes the Winehouse dichotomy — brilliant songstress, troubled addict — made all the more distressing because it was uttered during a period when Winehouse wasn’t abusing substances.
“Everyone was so happy there in that room and because Amy was clean, they thought this would be the ultimate,” said Asif Kapadia, director of the documentary, which opens July 10.
Of course, we all know how this story ends.
Winehouse died in 2011 at age 27 from the effects of alcohol poisoning.
Her descent into a maddening hell of drug abuse, her co-dependent relationship with oily (eventually ex) husband Blake Fielder-Civil, her relationship with her well-intentioned parents who alternately tried to clumsily intervene or brushed off the severity of her condition — none of it escapes Kapadia’s glare.
His goal during the construction of the documentary was for “the real Amy to come out. The bright-eyed, beautiful, normal Londoner. She was the kind of person you would have had a fun time with. I think her lyrics are amazing. The writing is what makes her so powerful. The final thing, you turn the mirror back to everyone — the audience, the media. We all sort of played a part in what happened to her.”
It took the director — who crafted the award-winning 2010 documentary “Senna,” about Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna — more than two years to conduct hundreds of interviews and sort through a mound of audio and video material archived by Winehouse’s first manager, Nick Shymansky.
Winehouse's father, Mitch, who, along with everyone in the film willingly participated, has since denounced "Amy." He claims that his statement that his daughter "doesn't need to go to rehab" was edited to exclude the rest of the sentence ("… at this time") and that footage of him toting a reality TV show crew (Mitch Winehouse also says now that it was for a documentary about families dealing with addiction, not a TV show) to St. Lucia, where Winehouse was sequestered in another attempt at detox, portrays him as opportunistic, when, he said, Winehouse approved of the intrusion.
“At certain points, he makes a few decisions that in hindsight, maybe weren’t the best,” Kapadia said. “It’s not me saying it. It’s Amy saying it in her lyrics and in interviews. Maybe it’s uncomfortable for him to look at some things.”
He continued, “Blake (Fielder-Civil) has seen it and he stands by it and says it’s honest. Most people look at the film and see the early part and say, ‘That’s our Amy, the one we want to remember.’ I’ve always said the essence of the film is honest and truthful.”
What is extraordinary about “Amy” is the volume of home videos, performance clips and voice mails that Shymansky and friend Ashby had saved, considering most of it was recorded in the pre-smartphone era.
In an early scene, Winehouse, at age 14 in 1998, is singing “Happy Birthday” at a friend’s party in a voice that belied her age. Other glimpses find her warbling an original song with an acoustic guitar in a record label office; resorting to picking her teeth when a clueless journalist is intent on drawing comparisons between Winehouse and Dido; and providing an eerie answer when asked how big she thinks her career will become.
“I don’t think I’m going to be at all famous. I don’t think I could handle it,” she responded.
Like her life, “Amy” at a certain point becomes less about music and more about a deadly spiral into substance abuse fueled by blind love and insecurity.
But it’s still bittersweet to watch Winehouse and Bennett in a studio in March 2011, four months before she would die, collaborating tenderly on the classic “Body & Soul.” Bennett is nurturing as she expresses frustration at her vocals, then reminds us in a voice over that, “She was a natural, a true jazz singer.”
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