Amy - Review

Fresh from his success with his Senna documentary, Asif Kapadia turns his attention to the tragic life story of the jazz pop singer Amy Winehouse. With this biographical documentary, we chart the story of a young girl from North London whose rise to fame entails all the usual rock star trappings - drink, drugs and paparazzi. But it does capture more than that. As a young girl, she had first hand dealings with a dysfuntional family unit - her father was never there, her mother being seen as weak as well as her own struggles with bulimia and her own body image. This conflict within her own life would play its own part in shaping how she would deal with fame, or not as the case may be.

As he had done with the Senna documentary, there are no talking heads to disrupt the flow of images but rather there are voices of friends, family and people within her circle pour out their memories of their friend, daughter, the person they knew away from the spotlight. With the array of footage found from either TV appearances, home video recordings, concerts and mobile phone recordings, there has never been a better time to collect footage and put it together for a film. But this also comes at a price. With the onslaught of modern technology, it asks of us, the viewer, how we disregard the notion of privacy or do we even give it a second thought?

All of this put aside, this is a fine documentary even if a little suspect with regards to the morals of the film (it feels like a cash in on someone who has died recently). Nevertheless it is a worthy film for those interested in either the singer herself or in pop culture's shameless glorification of the dead.