Amy Screening Reflection
Amy, directed by Asif Kapadia, delves deeply into the personal and professional life of the late superstar Amy Winehouse in order to allow the public to understand her life and untimely death. The film uses multiple techniques in order to create a full and detailed portrait of the singer and songwriter.
One of these is the use of home videos. These small snippets of Amy as a young woman, singing happy birthday to her siblings, hanging out with her first manager and close friend, Nick, or spending time with friends or her longtime love, Blake, give us as viewers an intimate view into her life as a human being rather than the persona she presented on stage. With these videos, we are given a little peak into her personal life, a portion of being that celebrities rarely share with the public.
Another technique used by the director is the addition of interviews. The interviews conducted with family and close friends are integrated as video and narration throughout the film, providing us with insight into the lives of the people who inhabited Amy’s close personal sphere and how her life intertwined with theirs. These people were important to Amy, and it is necessary to understand the roles they played in her life. Also, it is so important for viewers to understand how the people closest to Amy affected her wellbeing, especially Blake, who seemed to destroy her time and time again.
The director was incredibly sensitive in dealing with Amy’s struggle with drug addiction and eating disorders, without sweeping them under the rug as many do with such uncomfortable topics. Kapadia did an incredible job integrating emotion with fact in order to touch the viewer while allowing him or her to understand what was happening throughout the entirety of Amy’s career.
On a personal level, the film truly touched me. To be candid, I am not a crier. I can’t remember the last time a movie or book made me cry, but by the end of this documentary I found myself welling up with tears. I didn’t realize how slow and painful Amy’s descent from stardom was, and how much help she needed and wasn’t receiving, especially from her father who seemed to treat her as an object to be exploited for financial gain. It was so difficult to watch, but so necessary to see.
Overall, I have recommended this documentary to everyone I have spoken to about it. Amy is definitely one of the rawest and most touching documentaries I have seen to date.
