Amy

So I was lucky enough to discover Amy Winehouse and see her perform live well before she blew up in America and became the megastar that the media loved to hate. I saw her years ago at SXSW in  what is normally a booty shaking "black" club on 6th street and the place was packed to the gills; it was unbearably hot in there but everyone in attendance could tell that they were witnessing the birth of a star.

I was never a big fan of her or her music, and to be honest with you, I was really just there to see if she was going to show up drunk on stage or not, but even I was impressed with her beautiful voice and her heartfelt lyrics. As time went on though I simply lost interest in her as there just wasn't enough distortion in her music and R. Kelly's Ignition was still lighting up the airwaves and the clubs at night, so I already had my need for black soulful entertainment taken care of. 

So needless to say, I was a bit unsympathetic to her much publicized struggles and I really just blew off her death as an insignificant tragedy in the grand scheme of things at the time. And when I saw that they made a documentary on her life, I wasn't really all that interested in seeing it at first but I am a fan of music and I have been watching a lot of Tyrone Biggums on the Chappelle Show lately, so I decided to pop in.

Director Asif Kapadia starts the movie off with a clip of a teenage Amy singing Happy Birthday to a relative of hers. Her voice hadn't fully developed at that point but you could tell that she wasn't just some scrub who only sounds good in the shower. Through the use of home videos and a few recordings of her early shows and sessions in the studio, the first half of the film is dedicated to showing you her music making process. You see how everything she wrote was directly drawn from the experiences in her life; using everything from the unhealthy promiscuous nature of her relationships to her yearning for a real connection with her oddball father.

And sadly it was these very same things that ultimately led to her downfall. The second half of the film shows you what led to her abusing alcohol and drugs, and it also let's you know about her struggle with bulimia. You see how she was healthy both mentally and physically early on in her career and how she was absolutely blown away by the fact that she could make a living off of doing something she loved. But she also always claimed that fame was something that frightened her and that there would be no way that she could handle it. And as time went on and she became more and more famous, you saw her deteriorate before your very eyes.

Kapadia doesn't openly play the blame game when it comes to showing you who was responsible for Amy's struggles but you certainly do walk away hating her douchebag ex husband and her seemingly opportunistic father. Her attachment to her father I can understand but how could she not see that Blake Fielder was a complete loser? I mean the stupid hats alone should've have been a dead giveaway!

Anyway you are shown that she had quite a few people in her life that loved and supported her, including her longtime manager Nick Shymansky and her producer Salaam Remi, but even they ultimately couldn't keep her from what seemed to be her destiny.

This movie helps you gain an appreciation for just what kind of artist Amy Winehouse truly was; her perfect blend of soulful jazz and transparent lyrics is something that everyone can find a connection with. And I have to admit that it even converted this slightly jaded skeptic; so much so that I found myself sending my friend this text afterwards, " So I hate to admit it but Amy was hood! Oh wait, I meant good! It was both hood and good!" And that's really the perfect description of Amy's life!

I rate this movie as FRESH and strongly suggest that you pop in.