Year: 2015
Director: Asif Kapadia
No matter how short a life is, you can’t tell the whole story in 165 minutes and that’s the main problem with Asif ‘Senna’ Kapadia’s documentary of the short, tragic life of Amy Winehouse. Not that it’s a bad movie, it’s anything but. Through the use of copious, highly revealing home videos provided by her first manager, Nick Shymansky, Amy’s obvious talent and undoubted charisma effortlessly emerge, leading through to her horrific, public decline as fame, addiction and isolation exact their costly price.
As someone with not much more than a general awareness of her music, I was highly impressed by Amy’s oeuvre, a fantastic voice when on its game and a surprisingly (for me anyway) poetic feel for words; most of which were so starkly literal it’s hard to understand why no one saw fit to anticiapte the problems ahead. Though, of course, they did. Everyone, it seems, knew there were likely to be troubles afoot – friends, management, family, even it seems, fans.
‘Rehab’ is discussed in detail, both the song and the potential intervention. This is where the film starts naming names, Amy’s dad, Mitch, one time cabbie and VIz magazine character Cockney Wanker writ large, getting both barrels. Understandably, given the good kicking he gets here, Mitch is furious about the movie, demanding a re-edit apparently, which is as likely to happen as Amy’s resurrection. And to be scrupulous, you can see his point,since there is no shade whatever in his portrayal as a corpulent, wannabe singer whose foiled ambitions are fully realised by proxy in his precocious daughter.
Having said that, Mitch comes across as a veritable saint compared to Amy’s erstwhile husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, the boyfriend from hell, fewer redeeming husbandly attributes than Peter Sutcliffe and an even shittier hairstyle.
For me, that’s the problem with this film. There’s way too much finger-pointing and blaming going on and all this for a filmmaker who says he’s simply letting Amy’s voice be heard.
If only Mitch had agreed to her early entry into rehab. (He claims to be misquoted and said ‘not yet’). If only she hadn’t hooked up with Blake, on this showing, an arse of the highest, most despicable order.
If only the press had left her alone. If only her Mum had been a bit harder on her. If only. If only.
Who knows?
Not me, for sure, but there’s evidence in the early home videos to suggest that Amy herself was well aware of her demons and that fame, for all its fortune and privileges, wasn’t ever liable to lead to a positive outcome. By the end of the movie, the sadness is all embracing and it’s essentially anything but a happy experience, even though the Melbourne cinema where I watched it, found plenty of humour in early Amy’s infectious sassiness/gobbyness.
The music though, on the other hand, was the winner for me.
And isn’t that what really matters?
Fuck, she was good.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Not sure. Fans, probably and people who can’t resist a horrible train wreck. And isn’t that most of us?
Great review, thank you.
You’ve touched on the reasons for my ambivalence about going to see the film: I love Amy and want to find out more about her early life but gong to see the film does feel like morbid gawping.
Yeah, on one hand I want to see this, but on the other I know it’s going to be desperately sad and not an enjoyable night out. Undecided.
Whilst the gloominess is impossible to avoid, on balance I’d say it’s worth seeing for the music. The girl could sing all right.
I hate her music, but I am a bit of a ghoul and would watch it for the reasons listed above.
I’m sorry, did you say 165 minutes!!!!
You mean 15 minutes shy of three hours?
Kubrick’s ‘Paths of Glory’ lasts 86 minutes.
No film should be longer than a 100 minutes. No album should be longer than 40 minutes. No novel should be longer than 300 pages. No drum solo should be longer than five seconds.
128 mins on imdb – I’m wondering if the 165 mins includes the Q&A after the screening at yesterday’s previews. Regardless, I like a good long film, me, and this one is sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes after 39 reviews, including 5 stars from my favourite critic Peter Bradshaw (plus a fairly warm review above).
I’d amend the timings to 95, 35, 250 and 3, but otherwise you’re completely right, Moose.
I’m never ever going to see this film but I KNOW it needed a editor.
I am going to watch this film, but I do think she’s rather over-rated as an artist – she could certainly sing, but I think the only truly, world class song she ever wrote and performed is ‘Love is a Losing Game’. Don’t get me wrong, most people would kill for a song as good as that, but it doesn’t justify the stature she has, even before her untimely death.
The ghoulish aspect of the film appeals to me I’m afraid, as I think it’s a fascinating case of how the modern media know so much about a star that they can hound her to death, lay every aspect of her personal life bare, make a joke of her, while still professing to care about her. Then as soon as she dies, perform a volte face and immediately start talking about ‘poor Amy’. I am also very interested in seeing how the people around her justify their actions – that last tour where people were sharing YouTube videos of how bad she was – was so so so wrong.
Agree. Agree. Agree.
She was the distaff Gazza, with Blake the Incarcerated playing the Five Bellies role as the Evil Enabler and Thoroughly Inappropriate Influence. (Check actual number of bellies involved – Ed.). For a long time now, there’s always been a role – a need, even – for the disaster-waiting-to-happen, fucking-state-of-it, you’ll-never-guess-what-he/she-has-gone-and-done-now celebrity in our society: from Howard Hughes’s fingernails, via burger-gobbling fat Elvis, through to the King of Pop sharing his oxygen tent with Bubbles the chimp. And it’ll only get worse. We’re now so caked in the daily goo of the fake tribulations of soap characters and reality-TV meltdowns and melodramatic talent-show “journeys” that when some real-life drama comes along in the form of an actual person’s struggles with drink, drugs or mental health, we can’t really be blamed for treating it as just another piece of entertainment in the same vein. It’s become popcorn presented for our consumption, not a real person’s pain reported to spur our compassion. Train wrecks of celebrities’ lives have become indistinguishable from a CGI train plummeting over the edge of the Coronation Street viaduct.
(Written on the day that the self-styled Queen of the Selfies has denied making a cuckold of the Right Honourable Member for Rochdale by shtupping her “personal trainer”.)
Calm down, dear, it’s only celebrities.
I like your take Chimney, but isn’t the film simply a continuation of the media circus? And isn’t the director of this movie involved in some pretty blatant, erm, how shall I put it now, erm virtue signalling?
Well, he’s certainly profiting from her destructive lifestyle and subsequent death, so is he doing any different to what her father is being accused of?
Yeah it is but my point is more about the fact that people should have been looking out for her… Not so much call for that these days!
Fuck knows what the director’s motives are. Certainly a story worth telling though
I like Amy Winehouse, but I’m not sure if I’ll watch the film. Maybe at some point.
I’ve read a fair bit about it though. There was an interesting article (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/14/amy-winehouse-manager-nick-shymansky-interview) featuring interviews with those that knew her or were otherwise involved at the time and their reactions to the film. The part with her first manager is particularly worth reading.
Sounds like they got Mitch bang to rights – odious git. Heard him interviewed yesterday and was asked if it was a good idea to do a TV show about addiction whilst his daughter was trying to get clean and if he’s asked her whether it was ok. His reply was “I never asked her permission to do fings and she never asked me”. He’s just pissed off the film isn’t called ‘Mitch’ and centred on his risible attempt to be a lounge singer off the back of his daughters fame.
Just a question – do you regard ‘Senna’ equally as ghoulish? It features a life lived fast by a precocious talent and we know how it ends. Although apparently Mark Kermode claimed that he didn’t. I hate sports but thought ‘Senna’ was riveting
F1 is the sport for people who hate sports..
I have zero interest in Formula 1, but I thought the “Senna” documentary was superb.
I’m not sure if I’ll go and see the Amy documentary.
This probably sounds rather strange coming from someone who listens to music incessantly, but … I’ve not actually heard many of her songs. Perhaps I’m missing out.
My problem with Ami Winehouse isn’t the drink and drugs, my musical hero is Brian Jones (out pop star car-crash that!), but that, in eight years of being a recording artist, an in-demand recording artist, she made just two albums.
Two albums with a whole stack of singles plucked from them, so actually no stand-alone singles as far as I’m aware.
Not entirely her fault that she lived in an era when this was acceptable, but think on this…..The Beatles recording career was under eight years, and the whole of Buddy Holly’s, Jimi Hendrix’s and Eddie Cochran’s recording careers together (!) can fit inside her own.
I’ve not seen the film, so I may be missing something, but why all the opprobrium for Mitch Winehouse? I can’t imagine anything worse in life than losing a child, and yet here he is being sneered at people who only really pretend to care about his daughter.
Actually, I agree with that to a certain extent. It’s easy to portray a figure in a film exactly the way you want to by the use of selective quotes and Mitch has been hung out to dry using this process. The film looks to blame someone for Amy’s demise and her Dad (and erstwhile husband) are easy targets. Mitch isn’t an especially likeable figure as portrayed but nowhere is his grief even considered.
Mitch is hung out to dry by his actions and demeanour while his daughter was alive and since then. A deeply unpleasant man that I’ve been unfortunate enough to meet.
How ‘deeply unpleasant’ though? Are we talking Fred West here, or is he just a bit of a knobhead? In which case, why don’t we cut him some slack over his child dying?
A lot of a cunt pre-death and after. I don’t have a Mad Frankie Fraser-meter of Cuntiness to hand.
Ha. Mad as a lorry!
Remember that ‘meddlin’ wiv de kids’ is right off the end of the scale
I was born with the experience not to grass myself.
I agree that the media – and, by extension, a lot of the general public – obviously like to revel in other people’s troubles; tragedy tends to engage us more than mild success.
What happened to Amy was, fundamentally, a terrible shame: a likeable young lady with a great voice died far too young. By extension, a mother lost a daughter and people lost a friend, but I do feel that the general tone of ‘who do we blame?’ is slightly spurious. Is it the dislikeable father? The recidivist boyfriend? The press? Her friends? To completely exonerate Amy of any blame whatsoever does her a huge disservice as a human being, as it transforms her into a cheap victim, not a powerful talent. She chose to date the man she did; she chose to drink; she chose to take drugs.
What happened to her was such a great, great shame, but we’re all at least partly responsible for our actions.; the usual media narrative of villains and victims clouds a far more nuanced story.
I remember her for Back To Black, her appearances on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and ” Amy Whinehouse: The DayCame To Dingle”. All of these I love and seek out often. Not sure I need the film to be honest. Misguided talent, gets involved with wrong’un, difficult parent, dies. Not sure what he can add to what I know or love about Amy and I don’t want to start not loving her
saw this film last night and it’s excellent. A long film but didn’t feel it and everyone stayed at the end to watch the credits.
I don’t agree with the op that her father mitch is being stitched up. He’s just being portrayed as he seems to be, an absent father who was a huge influence on his daughter who in turn idolised him and was attracted to rats as a result. Or strong men as she might call them; strong being someone who doesn’t need you. Simple Freudian stuff.
And Blake was just a thick, unfunny junkie. Which was why she loved him. Oh no, did I say he was good-looking? Maybe that had something to do with it. Guys like him always do very very well with smart, middle-class girls, so no surprises there. I had a mate very similar to him who could literally talk any shit that came into his head (and trust me not much went on in there) and good looking successful girls would hang on his every word like he was a prophet, and then he’d sleep with them that night.
What most came over was her humour (the one where the interviewer tries to compare her work to Dido, is classic. Her remark about Justin Timberlake was laugh out loud) and authenticity.
I never really had any real interest in her or her music but came away from this liking her.
The thing that always bugs me about Mitch is his portraying himself in the media as her guardian, trying to save her from the sharks. If you’re gonna do that you leave yourself open to judged in the same light.
Just seen the Amy documentary Regardless if what you think.of her music – and to coin a phrase – if Tony Bennett thinks she’s fine then who the fuck are you? it’s not her death that is the inevitable thing it’s the way the business world treats talent as commodity that is valuable but disposable.
There was no duty of care, she like Kurt, Syd and many befire and since are hit by fame like a freight train. They are trapped, put in an airconditioned bubble and pusged from stage to hotel room to pub ti rehab. Yeah sure they may have bulimia, depression, drug problems, destroying their liver on a daily basis but the beast needs feeding and the show must go on.
The world treated her plight as a joke, a cheap punchline and she was just as much to blame for her predicament but the willingness of her immediate circle of friends and family to keep the money train rolling won out. Mitch Winehouse hates this film – it paints him as a willing leech and enabler, a deeply insensitive and foolish man. The film isnt afraid to point fingers and leave us to draw our iwn conclusions
In the end it was a slow death by drink and eating disorders tearing her insides up. The way that it was reported and even celebrated by some people had everything to do with the media image and nothing to do wirh the vulnerable young woman who at the end was robbed of the one thing she had left – her love of singing.
I dont own any of her records as I hate the production ( but that voice was something else.
I just wish that the media had seen past her hard image to the frail person inside. This film highlights her voice, her songwriting and her ability to wow a room. To see that all crumble in a crack induced living coma is truly heartbreaking
next time someone comes along that gets mentioned in the same breath as Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald by people like Bennett who have seen it all perhaps we should treasure rather than trash them.
Interview with the director here from 35 minutes in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02trfw8
I know how DFB likes Robert Elms but worth a listen none the less.
Just seen this (it’s out on DVD).
Terribly sad. So many controlling and manipulative people around her. Obviously you have to want to get treatment but there were many people sabotaging it and enabling her.
And how many ‘friends’ who just happened to have their videos on, or were recording her calls.
In one scene she’s being chased by a scrum of photographers, and one shouts ‘Cheer up, Amy’. They really are scum. Her body is being taken out of the house and all you can hear is the click, click click of the cameras.
How healthy, beautiful and full of life she was before all of that shit.