Officially Off Duty

Asif Kapadia’s heartbreaking portrayal of a vulnerable star.

Amy, Asif Kapadia’s soulful documentary about Amy Winehouse, opens with the precocious singer serenading her 14-year-old friend with a rendition of Happy Birthday. This home-video footage, shot in 1998, instills an inescapable sense of foreboding. But just as we’re bracing ourselves for a harrowing portrait of a talented young woman whose propensity for self-destruction would lead to her tragic death, aged 27, in 2011, Kapadia instead shows us a bubbly, naïve girl who was derailed by the unyielding greed of those closest to her. Premiering at Cannes Film Festival, Amy bridges the gap between troubled star and vulnerable girl.

Since Winehouse’s rise to international fame in 2006, her controversial, not-so-private life has divided opinion across the country. Winehouse is part of the 27 Club — along with artists such as Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain — and the film has a morbid fascination with her premature death, exploring it meticulously through intimate moments recorded on cameras and phones. Mitchell Winehouse (Amy’s father), impressed by the success of Kapadia’s film Senna, willingly gave access to a plethora of home videos. But after the film was made, it is no wonder that Mitchell fervently disassociated himself from it, saying that he had been portrayed in “the worst possible light”. A particularly distressing scene shows a bedraggled Amy at hospital. Audio clips of crying friends reveal that, after an overdose, Amy was forced to go on tour by her father instead of going into rehab. Mitchell’s own words, “She didn’t need to go to rehab”, condemn him further, and mark a pivotal moment in the film. The fun-loving young girl from the home videos vanishes as the self-destructive star of the paparazzi emerges. Followed by the flashing lights of cameras, images of the brutal aftermath of drug-induced fights with husband Blake Fielder-Civil, and footage of an unrecognisable Amy, it becomes impossible to forget these resonating words.

As Amy’s mental and physical health deteriorate, terrifyingly captured on film, a distorted version of the singer’s 2006 single Rehab reverberates, as the line “And if my Daddy thinks I’m fine” echoes Kapadia’s underlying message; was Mitchell Winehouse’s greed the cause of his daughter’s death? This is a touching commemoration of an innate and ferocious talent; a tragic story of a vulnerable girl.