What you could expect, decent summary of Winehouse's career and life

Horst_In_Translation

score 6/10

If you have seen Asif Kapadia's Formula-1-themed "Senna", you basically know what to expect here. This one is a pretty decent film from start to finish, very much by the books, but also with a couple surprisingly great moments. This film here does consist almost exclusively of archive footage and that's fairly impressive as it runs for over 2 hours. We see concert recordings and many recordings as well from Winehouse's husband that he made of the two. He really does look like one of the main forces of Winehouse's downfall and her falling deeper and deeper in this spiral of drugs and alcohol. But there are more reasons, like her tough relationship with her dad or the fact that she could not deal with stardom. This is an argument you hear frequently, but it may be true in her case. There is a scene when we hear that she is sick of singing her old really successful hits, but her struggles kept her from achieving new hits, so she is forced to sing the old ones and it seems as if this really shook her to the core.

The best thing about this film is, without a doubt, the music. No matter what opinion you have about Winehouse in terms of if she brought this on herself or is just a victim of the whole situation, there is no denying she was an absolutely outstanding artist and there are some mesmerizing recordings in here. This film is advertised with the notion that there is unseen material here, but I think this is generally a really pointless references as maybe nobody in the theater has seen all the old material, so it's fine there is unseen material in here, but nobody will perceive it as unseen. Anyway, if this documentary is eligible for Oscar consideration, I am sure it may make a deep run. It's very relevant, very contemporary and very well-made, even if moments of absolute greatness are very rare. One would be the ending when we see how she is dead and quickly afterward we see recordings of her when she was much younger and just a normal girl before her rise to stardom. Good job from Kapadia all in all and I recommend this film. A good tribute to a truly talented and very authentic artist. Thanks Amy for the music. Rest in peace.

Horst_In_Translation 15 September 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3317616/