Sympathetic but ultimately superficial portrait

malcp

score 7/10

I hoped this would offer a more revealing insight into Amy's mental illness, but the problem with some types of mental illness is that people are so very good at hiding it. I guess what you do see here, in a way that for most people is hidden, is how much of your life for anyone with mental health issues is really just an act. For sure, thanks to her amazing talent, Amy's life was played out to a much wider audience and hence captured - often in excruciating detail by the camera, but by the end of the film, although I had a better idea of the chronology of events, I think it really exposed surprisingly little of Amy Winehouse and just what made her tick. Yes many people along the way did recognise her instability, but I think it was quite notable how the media seized on drug abuse, when this, bulimia and even the alcoholism that killed her were merely symptoms of much deeper problems. Inevitably, the roller-coaster of drug-abuse and recovery dominates the narrative of this film, but generally overlooks how much time and effort Amy must have spent on becoming the best Jazz singer on the planet and the amount of intellectual effort she required to achieve that feat and also to produce lyrics that were both sincere and interesting. I think she achieved that aim, but a 5 minute chat with her friend during the 2008 Grammy awards revealed just how superficial she found the achievement. Sadly despite her intelligence, she had a fairly closed mind to any form of psychological therapy, and despite a succession of boyfriends, doesn't appear from anything we see here to have found anyone who she trusted enough who was in any position to help her change direction. To my mind, she created a kind of comic book character for herself, only to find that despite massive international acclaim, it didn't mean the same thing to her. She gave a massive amount to charity, and clearly had a sincere perspective on a huge range of issues, sadly nobody in this film really talks to her about anything but "Amy Winehouse".

malcp 17 July 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3278991/