Chris Knipp
07-12-2015, 06:44 PM
Asif Kapadia: Amy (2015
http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/bigyma.jpg
Powerful film but too tabloid; for Winehouse's art, not as good as Linnane's Dingle doc
The documentary biography Amy, by Asif Kapadia (Senna), is an powerful film about the brilliant singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. It's also a sad cautionary tale of modern celebrity media's brutal effect on a sensitive soul and the devastation that can be wrought, especially in such circumstances, by drugs and alcohol. As in previous films, Kapadia tells his story without talking heads. Here because of the filmmaker's access to survivors and to personal documents and Amy's presence at the center of a media feeding frenzy, one has almost the feeling of experiencing her life with her day by day, if posthumously. It's fascinating to see early or intimate clips showing Amy's precocious talents, her high spirits, her sense of humor, her irrepressible personality at its freshest and liveliest and healthiest.
The film presents her early life in enough detail to understand the tendencies and traumas the singer-songwriter later struggled with, leading to her tragic death from alcohol-induced heart failure four years ago at 27. Her talent showed itself early and unmistakably. In her early teens, she could make "Happy Birthday" sound like a riff by Billie Holiday. By eighteen, she was a full-fledged star. There is not as much as there might have been about the multiple musical influences that fed her songwriting and singing style -- but more about that later.
We learn that Amy's youthful home life was really quite sunny and happy, with friendly siblings and close girlfriends. But later we hear from her childhood best friend Juliete Ashby how Amy called her up to the stage at the Grammy Awards, at the peak of her success, and told her, "Jules, this is so boring without drugs."
I wish I felt about this film as Peter Bradshaw did when he wrote his five-out-of-five-star Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/16/amy-review-asif-kapadias-amy-winehouse-film-is-a-tragic-masterpiece) review after he saw it at Cannes. His enthusiastic description is how I first, vicariously, experienced the film. The actual film feels different for me -- not only sad, but, I fear, more tabloid and less adequate as an artistic portrait. Despite the unique figure at the center of it, this still becomes a familiar tale of pain, dysfunction and addiction and progressive decline, all happening in the limelight.
It's also a revealing tale of bad influences that are unmistakable in the case of three men. There were positive ones, such as Amy's early manager and friend, though he admits now too close a friend to be a wise manager, Nick Shymansky; understanding hiphop star and actor yasin bey (aka Mos Def); and reliable bodyguard Andrew Morris. And there were others. But the bad guys seem to have had the greater effect.
First among these was Amy's father, London cabbie Mitchell Winehouse. His abandonment of the family when she was nine was the devastating trauma of the sensitive, creative girl's childhood. When she became famous, he made a brand of himself and came along to capitalize. The first time she was pressed by recording company authorities to go into rehab, he rejected the idea, as is famously recalled in her song, "Rehab.": "They tried to make me go to rehab but I said, 'No, no, no.'/Yes, I've been black but when I come back you'll know, know, know/I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine...I won't go, go, go." Second was her boyfriend and on-and-off husband Blake Fielder-Civil, with whom she had a passionate, painful love affair. The tall, skinny main squeeze with the perpetual porkpie hat and stylish clothes was the ultimate Bad Influence, a codependent enabler drug addict with similar psychological issues who admittedly was the one who first introduced her to heroin. Protocol was waived to allow the couple to go into rehab together: they bolted early on.
Third was her mistaken choice of producer Raye Cosbert as her manager. As is stated in the film, Cosbert's priority was always getting her out on the road, which consistently had a bad effect on her. A nadir of the story comes when she is taken from home in London, asleep or passed out, direct to the airport and a private plane to a concert in Belgrade, a commitment she did not want to honor, and she comes onstage so drunk and stoned she cannot perform. Raye Cosbert seems to have been the force behind this public humiliation. These three men reflect Amy's need for a strong male figure -- due in itself to her father's disappearance from the family early on. They doubtless did the best they could, if in the case of the weak, insignificant hanger-on Blake, that was not very much. Their apologies may be sincere. They do not convince.
I read the film the way Bradshaw did; I just don't rate it as high. I think NPR (http://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/421141360/documentary-seeks-to-free-amy-winehouse-from-her-tabloid-legacy) is dead wrong to say it counters the usual tabloid image of the doomed, dysfunctional star simply by showing the childhood was happy. The end of the film, with its many sequences of armies of cameras flashing in our faces, is very tabloid. Wherein does this "free Amy" from her "tabloid legacy"? It perpetuates it.
Much more accurate is In These Times' (http://inthesetimes.com/article/18179/amy_winehouse_documentary_mental_illness_media) summary, "The new documentary Amy reveals how the media–and the men in her life–exploited Winehouse’s mental illness, only to deify her after her death." Amy was an addictive personality, and had other problems. It comes out late in the film that at fifteen he mother learned she was bulimic, and did nothing, hoping this was just a "phase." It also appears, though not mentioned in the film, that Amy cut herself to deal with inner pain.
Some little personal details are missing. Bradshaw discusses, but Kapadia doesn't, the "feline eyeliner style" Amy adopted "at some stage as a teenager" that was essential to her "jolie-laide" look (again Bradshaw's phrase, not the film's). Something crying out for discussion is Amy's remarkable style sense; her street and onstage outfits are always striking, and she even introduced a clothing line with Fred Perry (which Jake Bugg is associated with today); but no mention of this here. In the music line, I'd have liked to know why she stopped playing the guitar in concerts.
More importantly I wanted to see the complexity of elements in her music discussed. We need to hear about her influences and how she came by them, have more chances to hear her songs and discuss them. This we get in Maurice Linnane's excellent little film, Amy Winehouse, the Day She Came to Dingle (SFJFF 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3543-San-Francisco-Jewish-Film-Festival-2013/page2#post30698). This was my own first close look at her music, and I almost wish I had stopped there. It presents a whole concert, along with both a fascinating interview where this self-declared "Russian Jew" discusses her influences from jazz, rap, R&B, blues, girl bands, Madonna, gospel, and the rest, and brief samples of some of these, including Mahalia Jackson, provided by the fimmaker. The intimate Dingle festival concert for a small audience was more the kind of venue the singer relished, not the thousands she disappointed in Belgrade. From this film we learn how sophisticated and catholic her style and its sources are.
Amy gives pride of place to Tony Bennett, showing the two singers working on a joint album that had her side-by-side with one of her idols. I would differ with Bennett's insistence, twice repeated here, that she was "a jazz singer." It is flattering that he compares her to jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae. But Amy's range of influences was too eclectic to call her that. Kapadia's documentary is an indispensable portrait for fans and an intense viewing experience. But its impact shouldn't blind us to its shortcomings as a musical portrait.
Amy, 128 mins., debuted at Cannes. Other festivals. US release by A28 3 July 2015; also UK. Wide US release 10 July.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/bigyma.jpg
Powerful film but too tabloid; for Winehouse's art, not as good as Linnane's Dingle doc
The documentary biography Amy, by Asif Kapadia (Senna), is an powerful film about the brilliant singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. It's also a sad cautionary tale of modern celebrity media's brutal effect on a sensitive soul and the devastation that can be wrought, especially in such circumstances, by drugs and alcohol. As in previous films, Kapadia tells his story without talking heads. Here because of the filmmaker's access to survivors and to personal documents and Amy's presence at the center of a media feeding frenzy, one has almost the feeling of experiencing her life with her day by day, if posthumously. It's fascinating to see early or intimate clips showing Amy's precocious talents, her high spirits, her sense of humor, her irrepressible personality at its freshest and liveliest and healthiest.
The film presents her early life in enough detail to understand the tendencies and traumas the singer-songwriter later struggled with, leading to her tragic death from alcohol-induced heart failure four years ago at 27. Her talent showed itself early and unmistakably. In her early teens, she could make "Happy Birthday" sound like a riff by Billie Holiday. By eighteen, she was a full-fledged star. There is not as much as there might have been about the multiple musical influences that fed her songwriting and singing style -- but more about that later.
We learn that Amy's youthful home life was really quite sunny and happy, with friendly siblings and close girlfriends. But later we hear from her childhood best friend Juliete Ashby how Amy called her up to the stage at the Grammy Awards, at the peak of her success, and told her, "Jules, this is so boring without drugs."
I wish I felt about this film as Peter Bradshaw did when he wrote his five-out-of-five-star Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/16/amy-review-asif-kapadias-amy-winehouse-film-is-a-tragic-masterpiece) review after he saw it at Cannes. His enthusiastic description is how I first, vicariously, experienced the film. The actual film feels different for me -- not only sad, but, I fear, more tabloid and less adequate as an artistic portrait. Despite the unique figure at the center of it, this still becomes a familiar tale of pain, dysfunction and addiction and progressive decline, all happening in the limelight.
It's also a revealing tale of bad influences that are unmistakable in the case of three men. There were positive ones, such as Amy's early manager and friend, though he admits now too close a friend to be a wise manager, Nick Shymansky; understanding hiphop star and actor yasin bey (aka Mos Def); and reliable bodyguard Andrew Morris. And there were others. But the bad guys seem to have had the greater effect.
First among these was Amy's father, London cabbie Mitchell Winehouse. His abandonment of the family when she was nine was the devastating trauma of the sensitive, creative girl's childhood. When she became famous, he made a brand of himself and came along to capitalize. The first time she was pressed by recording company authorities to go into rehab, he rejected the idea, as is famously recalled in her song, "Rehab.": "They tried to make me go to rehab but I said, 'No, no, no.'/Yes, I've been black but when I come back you'll know, know, know/I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine...I won't go, go, go." Second was her boyfriend and on-and-off husband Blake Fielder-Civil, with whom she had a passionate, painful love affair. The tall, skinny main squeeze with the perpetual porkpie hat and stylish clothes was the ultimate Bad Influence, a codependent enabler drug addict with similar psychological issues who admittedly was the one who first introduced her to heroin. Protocol was waived to allow the couple to go into rehab together: they bolted early on.
Third was her mistaken choice of producer Raye Cosbert as her manager. As is stated in the film, Cosbert's priority was always getting her out on the road, which consistently had a bad effect on her. A nadir of the story comes when she is taken from home in London, asleep or passed out, direct to the airport and a private plane to a concert in Belgrade, a commitment she did not want to honor, and she comes onstage so drunk and stoned she cannot perform. Raye Cosbert seems to have been the force behind this public humiliation. These three men reflect Amy's need for a strong male figure -- due in itself to her father's disappearance from the family early on. They doubtless did the best they could, if in the case of the weak, insignificant hanger-on Blake, that was not very much. Their apologies may be sincere. They do not convince.
I read the film the way Bradshaw did; I just don't rate it as high. I think NPR (http://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/421141360/documentary-seeks-to-free-amy-winehouse-from-her-tabloid-legacy) is dead wrong to say it counters the usual tabloid image of the doomed, dysfunctional star simply by showing the childhood was happy. The end of the film, with its many sequences of armies of cameras flashing in our faces, is very tabloid. Wherein does this "free Amy" from her "tabloid legacy"? It perpetuates it.
Much more accurate is In These Times' (http://inthesetimes.com/article/18179/amy_winehouse_documentary_mental_illness_media) summary, "The new documentary Amy reveals how the media–and the men in her life–exploited Winehouse’s mental illness, only to deify her after her death." Amy was an addictive personality, and had other problems. It comes out late in the film that at fifteen he mother learned she was bulimic, and did nothing, hoping this was just a "phase." It also appears, though not mentioned in the film, that Amy cut herself to deal with inner pain.
Some little personal details are missing. Bradshaw discusses, but Kapadia doesn't, the "feline eyeliner style" Amy adopted "at some stage as a teenager" that was essential to her "jolie-laide" look (again Bradshaw's phrase, not the film's). Something crying out for discussion is Amy's remarkable style sense; her street and onstage outfits are always striking, and she even introduced a clothing line with Fred Perry (which Jake Bugg is associated with today); but no mention of this here. In the music line, I'd have liked to know why she stopped playing the guitar in concerts.
More importantly I wanted to see the complexity of elements in her music discussed. We need to hear about her influences and how she came by them, have more chances to hear her songs and discuss them. This we get in Maurice Linnane's excellent little film, Amy Winehouse, the Day She Came to Dingle (SFJFF 2013) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3543-San-Francisco-Jewish-Film-Festival-2013/page2#post30698). This was my own first close look at her music, and I almost wish I had stopped there. It presents a whole concert, along with both a fascinating interview where this self-declared "Russian Jew" discusses her influences from jazz, rap, R&B, blues, girl bands, Madonna, gospel, and the rest, and brief samples of some of these, including Mahalia Jackson, provided by the fimmaker. The intimate Dingle festival concert for a small audience was more the kind of venue the singer relished, not the thousands she disappointed in Belgrade. From this film we learn how sophisticated and catholic her style and its sources are.
Amy gives pride of place to Tony Bennett, showing the two singers working on a joint album that had her side-by-side with one of her idols. I would differ with Bennett's insistence, twice repeated here, that she was "a jazz singer." It is flattering that he compares her to jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae. But Amy's range of influences was too eclectic to call her that. Kapadia's documentary is an indispensable portrait for fans and an intense viewing experience. But its impact shouldn't blind us to its shortcomings as a musical portrait.
Amy, 128 mins., debuted at Cannes. Other festivals. US release by A28 3 July 2015; also UK. Wide US release 10 July.