BWW Reviews: AMY Attracts 'Till It Hurts

What or who killed Amy Winehouse? It keeps niggling at us as a society. The official cause is acute alcohol poisoning, but had she just drank a little less - was it the substance abuse disorder? Or were she but a little fatter - the bulimia? No - neither would have mattered had she been found earlier. Maybe, if the friend she begged and wailed for in breakout-hit "REHAB" were real and around to save her, we'd still hear Amy's soulful lyrics and smoky voice - turned up in the club and not in requiem. Perhaps, we'd be in the middle of a comeback. In place of the scathing jibes found in stand-up routines and late night hosts' monologues or the charmless shots from paparazzi plastered on the front pages of tabloids-wait, was it the media? Whether in drug recovery or not, there are plenty of bullying and cruel media personalities and their henchman, the paparazzi, around to luridly report on any given celebrity's personal trainwreck. Then again, who's always there to read it? We can't be blamed, can we? Maybe she should shoulder the responsibility. After all, couldn't she have just gone to rehab?

No, says AMY, you've overlooked the most obvious answer in this multiple choice question. All of the above killed Amy Winehouse.

So much has gone into making AMY the absorbing film it is. There is Winehouse's true-to-life narrative. Her and the film's end is the most inevitable humanity knows and we're hurtling toward it no matter the speed of the documentary itself. There is Winehouse's media narrative. It's difficult to watch footage of the young, plump vivacious girl so full of cheek, talent and chutzpah when you've witnessed the very public bloom and decay of the woman. Then there are the filmmaking efforts of BAFTA Award-winning director Asif Kapadia and crew.

Kapadia excels in storytelling and human decency in this truly angering and depressing chronicle of the rise and fall of the tragic chanteuse. He and his crew imbibed roughly 100 interviews about Winehouse to produce this 128 minute likeness of her. Kapadia foregrounds Winehouse's voice by foregrounding her music and including copious amounts of her recorded material expertly arranged by Antônio Pinto, images of her written songbook, home recordings, and live performances. Instead of a sea of talking heads, Kapadia places the interviewees' disembodied voices into the background. In doing so, he provides a choral Wall of Sound around Winehouse. Bolstered by chorus members like Tony Bennett, Salaam Remi, Yaasin Bey, and ?uestlove, AMY is one of Winehouse's finest performances.

AMY's greatest accomplishment is its characters. There are surprise guests - lyrics are stars with custom-wardrobes. Kapadia displays them across the screen with their fonts unique to the mood and their footing equal to the songstress' voice and red carpet appearances. Kapadia wields sound and light like a sword and, in the process, creates a blistering manifestation of fame and notoriety, even deadlier weapons.

Most remarkably, he resists turning Winehouse's supporting cast of characters into caricatures. Blake Fielder-Civil, Winehouse's ex-husband, is not the pure leech of Daily Mail articles. Rather, he is a magnetic, gravelly-voiced, shadowy figure in Winehouse's life with his own moments of goofiness and lack. His allure to Winehouse becomes apparent. As does his resemblance. Alluring and gravelly-voiced but filled with silliness and wanting. Sound familiar? Mitch and Janis Winehouse are simpleminded, neglectful parents, not Papa Joe and Mamma Rose. Raye Cosbert is a callous, business-minded manager. He pushes Winehouse into a tour she's patently not up for but he's not passing out barbiturates in the studio. These aren't the villains of your biopics of yesteryear- rotten to the core people intent on dragging down a shooting star. Fielder-Civil and the Winehouse patriarch and matriarch are tragic figures in their own right.

Neither is Winehouse white-washed. Every legend has the black and white portrait of where she gazes dreamily skyward hanging on the wall of the public mind's eye. Kapadia allows Amy to have this portrait but he still lays bare Amy's often self-destructive, sometimes obnoxious behavior. He knows a little smoot won't bury the burning brilliance crackling behind those transfixing eyes. In AMY, Amy the legend and Amy the mortal meet and set alight, thereby illuminating a truth we already knew - Amy existed, not merely in our public consciousness, but she engaged in existence like us all. Isn't that a truly encouraging and yet harrowing thought? We are alike, all of us, including Amy. And for once, with Kapadia - in spite of Mitch Winehouse's protestations - we are in good hands.

AMY directed by Asif Kapadia and produced by James Gay-Rees is rated R for language and drug material. In theaters now.

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