Review of Amy (2015) by Gavink — 10 Jul 2015

Before seeing this film, I was already a "fan" (an idea she didn't approve of) of Amy. Went to see her 2007 Glastonbury performance when I was 12. I thought I knew just what kind of girl she was before her world got much darker.

But I was struck by how little I actually knew about the whole picture after seeing Kapadia's documentary. She was bright-eyed, wise beyond her years and so loving to the people around her that the only person she could ever mistreat was herself.

She truly had the most unadulterated relationship with music, something not every mainstream artist can claim these days. But like many other reviews have said, her story is much more complicated than that.

Never openly placing the blame on any particular person or interest group, Kapadia keeps his/our gaze on the singer herself, allowing the audience to experience the world of Amy Winehouse through her own eyes.

This intense focus on the subject makes the movie an engrossing and uncomfortable watch at the same time: on the one hand, we are delighted to witness on screen the unique mesmerising talent and the endearing, uninhibited personality that made Amy Winehouse tick; on the other, we are tormented by the gradual feeling of losing her again to depression, addiction and the unrelenting celebrity machine closing in on her.

Even though the last twenty minutes of the film is almost unbearable and makes you hope the story would somehow end differently, you realise that deep down, the Amy you see toward the end of her life is still the same Amy all along --- her need for love and her capacity for loving those close to her had never diminished.

Lost as she was, Amy was the only person who had remained true to others throughout the story.