{"id":920,"date":"2015-12-21T08:22:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T14:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/?p=920"},"modified":"2015-12-21T08:24:22","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T14:24:22","slug":"the-tragic-story-of-amy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/2015\/12\/the-tragic-story-of-amy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tragic Story of ‘Amy’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Amy1\"<\/a>
From \u2018Amy,\u2019 Courtesy A24<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

When I think of music\u2019s great voices, I think of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Adele.<\/p>\n

Amy Winehouse was as good as any of \u2018em.<\/p>\n

She was a tiny girl with massive pipes\u2014her voice brassy and buttery and frayed at the edges. She was at once behind and ahead of the times\u2014a classic jazz singer who became a pop phenomenon, a women who claimed the past and made it her own. \u201cShe had the complete gift,\u201d the great Tony Bennett said. When she died in 2011 at the age of 27, it wasn\u2019t just she who lost that gift: It was all of us.<\/p>\n

I was a Winehouse fan before I watched Amy<\/em>, Asif Kapadia\u2019s excellent documentary of her all-too-short career. I mourned her passing\u2014or, at least, I mourned her as much as you can anyone whom you know through a handful of songs. But the doc brought out her life in tragic detail.<\/p>\n

Kapadia introduces us to a teenage Amy, sucking on lollipops and laughing with her friends, already showcasing her chops by trilling through the \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d song. (Never has it sounded so bearable.) And as she begins her musical career, singing jazz standards at first and then through her first album, Frank<\/em>, Winehouse looks and sounds and seems so normal<\/em>. \u00a0Besides her voice, the only thing that really differentiated the girl from lots of others was her love of the past: She adored the jazz greats from decades ago, and it was with them, not the pop idols of the late \u201890s and early 2000s, with whom she shared an affinity. Ironically, she sounds so mature <\/em>when she\u2019s younger\u2014like a 50-year-old trapped in the body of a 19-year-old fledgling diva.<\/p>\n

The doc suggests that Winehouse never had a desire to be famous. She wasn\u2019t looking for the superstardom that knocked down her door.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to be at all famous,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t think I could handle it. I\u2019d probably go mad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, that\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n

\"Amy<\/a>
Amy poster, courtesy A24<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amy<\/em> unblinkingly traces Winehouse\u2019s all-too-quick ascent to fame and parallel decline into a haze of booze and drugs. We need no spoiler warnings for this story: We know where it will end. Yet it\u2019s still heartbreaking to watch it happen. You want to shout at the screen for her to get the help she needs. To cut loose the bad influences in her life. In a way, you want to take the singer in your arms and protect her\u2014to push away the paparazzi that preyed upon her every boozy misstep, to wall her off from the evils of the world and let her sing. Just sing. It\u2019s what she was put on this earth to do, Amy<\/em> suggests: It was in song that she was happiest. Healthiest. The music fed her, just as her music fed us.<\/p>\n

There is no single Iago in Amy<\/em>, no one catalyst that ruined her. Amy<\/em> points to many factors that contributed to the woman Winehouse was and the messed-up superstar she became. Amy\u2019s father wasn\u2019t around much when she was a kid, and her mother admits she wasn\u2019t strong enough to rein in her headstrong daughter. Blake, Winehouse\u2019s longtime boyfriend and short-time husband, introduced her to a lifestyle that included staggering amounts of alcohol and drugs. She resisted rehab\u2014her most famous song is heartbreakingly autobiographical\u2014but even when she finally got help, her own fame sabotaged the process. When she overdosed in 2007, her family and friends staged an intervention, bringing her to a Four Seasons Hotel to help her get clean. Within hours, the rest of the hotel rooms were filled with reporters, and pictures of her were plastered in the Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It reminds us that, in a way, we too were complicit in her downfall. As a culture, we bought those issues of the Sun<\/em>. We laughed at the late-night jokes at Winehouse\u2019s expense. Instead of treating her spiral as a tragedy, we took it as a reality show\u2014fodder for our supermarket tabloids and watercooler talks. Sometimes we forget that pop stars\u2014the Biebers, the Bynes, the Lohans, the Winehouses\u2014are people too.<\/p>\n

But of course, Winehouse herself is to blame, as well. \u201cLife teaches you really how to live it, if you live long enough,\u201d Bennett says at the end of Amy<\/em>. As much as her voice seemed so confident in song\u2014soaring and diving and dancing along the bars\u2014she couldn\u2019t master the cadence of life. She didn\u2019t give herself enough time.<\/p>\n

Amy<\/em> is a harsh movie, full of all sorts of content that I\u2019d point out in a Plugged In<\/em> review. But it\u2019s a good movie, too\u2014thoughtful and mindful. It is both an homage to greatness and a horrific cautionary tale. I\u2019ve still got a documentary or two to see, but right now, I think it\u2019s the best doc of the year.<\/p>\n

Maybe about midway through the Oscar ceremony Feb. 28\u2014when most of us are grabbing a snack and biding our time for the big awards\u2014I bet we\u2019ll hear the name Amy mentioned as a Best Documentary nominee. Maybe we\u2019ll hear it again, as Asif Kapadia runs on stage to accept a statuette for his graceful, heartbreaking movie.<\/p>\n

That honor, should it materialize, will be small recompense for the loss it chronicles. But at least it will remind us of a titanic talent in a fragile body. It will remind us what might\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I think of music\u2019s great voices, I think of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Adele. Amy Winehouse was as good as any of \u2018em. She was a tiny girl with massive pipes\u2014her voice brassy and buttery and frayed at the edges. She was at once behind and ahead of the times\u2014a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2036,"featured_media":921,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,365,3],"tags":[310,311,11],"class_list":["post-920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","category-editors-choice","category-movies","tag-amy","tag-amy-winehouse","tag-misfits"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Tragic Story of 'Amy'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I think of music\u2019s great voices, I think of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Adele. 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