Amy and Nina, Part One: Amy

“A jazz artist doesn’t want fifty thousand people in front of them.”
Tony Bennett

Amy

Is a documentary.  That means all the things in it really happened, and you know they did because it looks more like TV than a film.  And some of it is actual TV footage.  It’s directed by the man who made Senna, which everybody says is brilliant and which I haven’t seen.

Most reviews of the film will likely refer to “watching Amy’s public downward spiral”, or remembering the subject for “those pap shots of her running through the streets, drunk and bloodied, or stumbling around on stage, barely slurring through her songs.”

But this one won’t.  I liked Winehouse, but was never a big fan.  The first time I heard Rehab, I thought “this is brilliant, who is it?” and was surprised to find out.  More to the point, the “media circus” stuff is easy to ignore.  So, I ignored it.  There was nothing particularly interesting to me about a twenty-something singer fucking herself up in public; like everything else a pop singer could do in the twenty-first century, it had all been done before, and done better.  There’s nothing really shocking about it anymore.  Except that it makes it on to the news, which is a genuinely shocking and depressing reality.  

(It’s depressing to watch adults swarming around a car to get a picture of someone in a fucked-up state to put on the front page of a newspaper which screams “OMG LOOK HOW FUCKED-UP SHE IS” as if that’s a worthwhile thing for a “newspaper” to do.)

Amy’s father, Mitchell Winehouse, is apparently disappointed by the film.  Which is entirely understandable, because he comes out of it looking like a bit of a cunt.  He seems complacent about the impact of his leaving the family, his daughter’s eating disorder, her drug problems, her health.  He claims the film is edited unkindly.  It's not exactly an attack on him, but he and Amy's ex-husband don't come out of it well at all.

This article quotes Mitch Winehouse talking about the Amy Winehouse Foundation:

‘”Every day we feed 65 homeless kids in Euston. We’ve got the Crash Pad, where young people come in off the streets at night – we house them, we feed them, clean them up and get them back into work. You’ve got kids coming up to us saying, ‘If it wasn’t for Amy, I’d be dead.’ Why isn’t that in the film…isn’t this a story?”’

No, it isn’t a story, for the same reason it wouldn’t have been a story five years ago when his daughter’s problems were the subject of lurid headlines and Frankie Boyle jokes: it didn’t fit the narrative.  I’ve spoken to journalists with far better reputations than those who diarise the public problems of celebrities, and always come away with the feeling that they decide on their angle and then get a quote or two (from a “close pal” or “an onlooker”) to back it up.  (I used to write essays the same way when I was a student, but I wasn’t writing for public consumption about someone’s very personal problems, so it’s definitely not as bad.)

The filmmakers would likely argue that the film is about the subject and not what happened after her death.  Which is fair enough.  But if I was Mitch Winehouse, I would be pretty upset by it. 

The film suggests that Amy trusted people who may have had their own interests in mind when doing deals on her behalf.  Not having been there, we’ll never know.

Whenever I think about Kurt Cobain’s personal/public problems, his obvious contempt for the bland corporate world he was in, I usually just think “If you don’t want to be famous, don’t sign for the biggest record label on the planet, genius” because if he hated MTV, he could’ve stayed on Subpop and just avoided the whole thing.  Easier said than done, no doubt.  I bet I (or anyone else) would find it difficult to turn down a shitload of money to make music…in Winehouse’s case, it didn’t really occur to me.  In an interview, a young Amy says “I wouldn’t want to be famous, I don’t think I could handle it” and it’s hard not to feel sympathy, seeing the circus at her house, waiting for her to come out looking dazed and dishevelled.  (I’m probably being far too harsh to Kobain.  Maybe I’m playing “Devil’s Advocate”.  That’s what people call it when they say a really obnoxious thing and want to distance themselves from it immediately.)

Denying that success would be commercially-measured, a young Winehouse says: “Success to me is being able to work with who I want…”.  She wasn’t bothered about money – even though she made a lot.  A lot of people think that makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense.

Her producer, Salaam Remi, says: “Even if you drop her from the label, I will pay for her to come here and record, because the shit moves me.”  Which sums it up quite neatly.

Winehouse is a good subject for a film: she’s funny, open, gobby and entertaining, and there’s a wealth of home movie and interview footage available.  In asking a teenage Amy Winehouse about her lyrics, a journalist mentions Dido by way of comparison.  Amy’s face is a picture.  She manages to speak without words, oozing contempt at being mentioned in the same sentence as such a lightweight charisma-vacuum.  She looks like a sullen, slightly spoiled teenager: funny, honest and really fucking cool.  The film is worth watching for that scene alone.

One of the really touching moments is when ‘Wino’ sings with her idol Tony Bennett.  Even seeing him on screen presenting an award, she looks transfixed, open-mouthed.  When she records with him, she is nervous and clearly worried about not being good enough.  (Naturally, Bennett is cool about it.)

The film is very strongly-reliant on the “young-artist-gets-famous-too-fast-and-can’t-handle-it” angle and the “tragic genius fuck-up” narrative.  I came out of it feeling there were a lot of things barely discussed or glossed over, like her eating disorder, depression and the relationship with her parents, among others.  Not that I necessarily want to delve too deeply into those things, mind you; but they would provide a bit more depth.

Amy Winehouse seemed to believe that an artist had to suffer in order to work.  That her life became a self-fulfilling prophecy is probably the saddest thing about this film.