Amy

And this week's Friday night movie has been....Amy!

Original image located here. Accessed 27th September 2019

Yep, it's the documentary based on the life of one Amy Winehouse.
At the time, when her career was in full flight, I didn't pay a lot of attention to Amy. I heard little of her music but I DID hear a lot about her daily escapades with drug & alcohol abuse and constantly making a fool of herself in public. Indeed, it's not a good sign when you find yourself asking 'Wait, she's a singer?'.
However, most of my knowledge about Amy Winehouse has been informed through reading the book Cradle to the Stage (by Virginia Hanson-Grohl). And the section dedicated to Amy, as recounted by her mother Janis, paints a picture of the eternal rebel, fiercely resisting advice, warnings, common-sense and any form of order and structure. And suddenly Amy's famous declaration of "They tried to make me to go rehab / I said: No No No" seems less defiant and more petulant.
So can this documentary present some new information?

Much like Mystify: Michael Hutchence, this is a documentary built out of (mostly) home video footage and the accounts of the people who knew the subject. It does indeed show Amy at her best, a singer and a writer, and at her worst. It doesn't shy away from the rebel image (as described above) and it is saddening to hear the attempts from various people trying to stop Amy from her self-destructive tendencies only to fail.
Indeed, it is depressing see Amy go from a young, pretty and charismatic performer into a mess. Going into the documentary, we all know how the story ends but that doesn't make the journey any less harrowing.
Still it is impressive to see the amount of material the makers of this documentary had to work with. A stand out for me was the footage of her in a studio working alongside her hero Tony Bennett. And a story from a friend who bursts into tears as she tells it.
So in the end, like any good documentary, this is raw, honest and leaves a sizable impression