Amy Reflection
To be quite honest, I didn’t know much about Amy Winehouse going into the screening of the movie, Amy. I remember being about ten years old and seeing Amy Winehouse on the cover of magazines and TV for the erratic behavior and addictions. I feel her career very quickly progressed and she moved through Lieb’s four stages of a music career very quickly. She went from sweet girl from North London, to hot mess really fast. However, I feel like the movie let me see another side to the story. One of the most interesting things I found about the movie was the division of the movie into two parts, pre fame first half of the movie and post fame second half of the movie. At exactly half way, the movie suddenly takes us to a scene with intense bursts of flashes from the cameras of the paparazzi. The scene lasts much longer than it would need to in order to convey the point, and it really conveys a feeling of claustrophobia and not being able to move without being guided. The flashes are irritating, and we get a sense of what it was like for Amy to have to deal with this on a daily basis. I think what concerned me the most about Amy’s death was really the greed that was involved in her career. She was clearly not well for several years, and instead of allowing her to work on her music and focus on rehabilitation, the records company and even her own father milked her for all she was worth, and forced her to play music from Back to Black because it was popular and made money. From the get go, we see Amy’s passion for music, for being creative and innovative in an area where so many stick to the status quo. Repeating songs for money was not what she was about, and it literally killed her inside. The concert at Belgrade was the last straw. Her intoxication was a cry for help, and the record companies, her manager, and family all turned a blind eye to it. Its incredible that greed can do this, but clearly we see it happen here. The movie shows us that while the media may have portrayed Amy as a self destructive hot mess, in reality she was a vulnerable person, with a lot of insecurities and crying for help, which she did not get.
