{"id":13706,"date":"2015-07-17T00:08:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T07:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=13706"},"modified":"2015-07-15T14:27:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T21:27:15","slug":"amy-doc-a-dismal-portrayal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/07\/17\/amy-doc-a-dismal-portrayal\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy doc a dismal portrayal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image from the movie Amy<\/em>. Amy Winehouse died four years ago this month. (photo from epk.tv)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Amy Winehouse, the brash little Jewish girl with the great big voice, died four years ago this month. There are any number of ways to mark that unhappy anniversary and draw inspiration from the British singer-songwriter\u2019s artistic legacy. Subjecting yourself to Amy<\/em>, Asif Kapadia\u2019s unattractive and superficial documentary, is not the recommended option.<\/p>\n

Amy<\/em> opened on July 10. Strewn with grainy video footage shot by Winehouse, her family and friends over several years, the film is conceived as an intimate, behind-the-scenes portrait of a very public, very talented figure. Given that Winehouse mined her troubled relationships for her pain- and yearning-filled lyrics, it makes sense to conflate her creative and personal lives. But, rather than highlighting Winehouse\u2019s artistic courage and her commitment to confronting and conveying hard truths, Amy<\/em> presents its subject as weak, insecure, volatile and vulnerable. In lieu of insight, Kapadia offers amateur psychologizing.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
In Amy, filmmaker Asif Kapadia can\u2019t resist focusing on Winehouse\u2019s low points. (photo from epk.tv)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The list of culprits goes way back. When Amy was a toddler, her mother wasn\u2019t strong enough to stand up to her or rein her in. (Had her mother set firm boundaries all along, who\u2019s to say the free-thinking Amy wouldn\u2019t have rebelled and run away as a teenager?)<\/p>\n

Her father cheated on her mother for years before they divorced when Amy was an adolescent. We are left to conclude that this is the source of Amy\u2019s neediness, promiscuity, vulnerability and poor judgment regarding men. (Mitch Winehouse resurfaces once her career takes off, which allows Kapadia to imply that he was more concerned with Amy\u2019s income streams than with her health.)<\/p>\n

Oddly, no other facts about Winehouse\u2019s upbringing are deemed to be relevant, including what kind of work her parents did or how they instilled her Jewish identity.<\/p>\n

We infer that the North London family was lower middle-class, without connections or access to opportunities for their children. From the playful, self-deprecating way Winehouse refers to herself in messages left on answering machines, it appears that she associated being Jewish with being a curiosity and an outsider.<\/p>\n

Although lyrics were important to her, there was no literary component to Winehouse\u2019s Jewish identity. Her musical idols weren\u2019t Jewish wordsmiths such as Bob Dylan, Laura Nyro or Paul Simon but vocalist\/interpreters Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett. (Bennett\u2019s collaboration in the studio with an awestruck Winehouse on \u201cBody and Soul\u201d for his Duets II<\/em> album \u2013 reportedly her last recording \u2013 is one of the more wrenching sequences in Amy<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

The film also casts some responsibility for the 27-year-old\u2019s premature demise on her bad-boy lover and eventual husband Blake Fielder-Civil. She followed his lead into hard drugs out of some twisted combination of love, obsession and need.<\/p>\n

Finally, Kapadia tosses the pressures of fame and the pursuit of the paparazzi into the mix. If Amy<\/em> is starting to sound like the familiar, formulaic shape of an episode of VH1\u2019s Behind the Music<\/em>, your hearing is excellent.<\/p>\n

The documentary\u2019s big revelation \u2013 which is withheld until late in the film, giving it a sensationalist vibe \u2013 is that Winehouse was bulimic. Had Amy<\/em> presented her illness as a defining (albeit secret) characteristic from childhood instead of withholding it for dramatic purposes, the documentary\u2019s social utility would be infinitely greater.<\/p>\n

Regrettably fulfilling the clich\u00e9s of too many portraits of artists, Amy<\/em> can\u2019t resist being drawn \u2013 like the proverbial moth to a flame \u2013 to the sordidness, unhappiness and public embarrassment that denoted Winehouse\u2019s low points.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, what will remain long after the details of her life have faded into trivia on a Wikipedia page is that extraordinary voice. The best way to mark Amy Winehouse\u2019s life is to listen to her music.<\/p>\n

Amy<\/em> is screening at Fifth Avenue Cinemas and Cineplex Odeon International Village. It is rated R for language and drug material. It runs 128 minutes.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image from the movie Amy. Amy Winehouse died four years ago this month. (photo from epk.tv) Amy Winehouse, the brash little Jewish girl with the great big voice, died four years ago this month. There are any number of ways to mark that unhappy anniversary and draw inspiration from the British singer-songwriter\u2019s artistic legacy. Subjecting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[4186,4187],"class_list":["post-13706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-amy-winehouse","tag-asif-kapadia"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}