January 19

Today’s Genre-ary was an Academy Award winner from 2016. Amy is the story of British singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse.

I knew only a little bit of Amy Winehouse. I am unfamiliar with her music, but I did know of her death in 2011 and I had heard of this documentary from A24 when it was making the rounds in 2015.

Constructed by home movies, archival footage and personal interviews, Amy paints a picture of a remarkably talented woman who struggled with the traps of fame and the dangers of excess that, at times, went hand and hand with it.

Watching this tragedy unfold in this documentary, I was struck with the idea that Amy Winehouse never truly knew who she was or that she was always afraid of the truth and she spent plenty of time running from it by the drug use or the alcohol. It seemed as if there were two powerful men in her life whom she adored, her father Mitch and her husband Blake Fielder, and both of them appeared to take advantage of her celebrity. The scenes of her father bringing a camera crew to an island hideaway with Amy was repulsive.

Amy never felt comfortable as a celebrity. The constant imagery of her moving through a pool of paparazzi with cameras clicking away is one of the enduring depiction of this doc.

Another is the amazing strength of Amy’s voice and her songwriting skills. The doc had all kinds of performances from recordings over her career with lyrics to the songs written on screen allowing the song to speak as much as the sadness surrounding much of her existance.

You know you’re something special when you can have legendry singer Tony Bennett end the documentary with the quote, “She was one of the truest jazz singers I ever heard. To me, she should be treated like Ella Fitzgerald, like Billie Holliday. She had the complete gift.”