The Movie Diorama A biographical documentary depicting both the early personal life and musical career of Amy Winehouse, who unfortunately overdosed on drugs in 2011. Biopics are difficult to review, you have to refrain from judging the person that is being portrayed and just review the documentary itself. However, before I start I would like to say that Amy Winehouse was incredibly talented. It really was a shame what she went through in terms of her own personal demons. She was clearly infectiously likeable and down to earth, devoted to her one passion. This documentary creatively captures her fragility through the use of old recordings, montages of pictures with onscreen lyrics to accompany them and countless awards ceremonies for all the recognition she rightfully deserved. This is a statement. To explore and convey the desirable disease of fame. Fame. It can corrupt the most innocent of souls. The influx of money, power and popularity can enhance the accessibility of drugs and alcohol. In Amy's case, it destroyed her. Not solely, the film takes the time to go through her stages of early depression before she took the world by storm. It's utterly moving and powerful. A young woman susceptible to external influences. She didn't know what she was doing, it was out of her control. The way the media covered her story rather enraged me, with several chat shows and news reports mocking her. It's important to acknowledge that the media only saw one side to her, but it's a shame they reduced her to a mess. As empathetic as this is, we also celebrate her work by listening and watching her perform. Director Asif Kapadia dynamically balanced her lows and highs to portray an enigmatic young woman who was taken from us far too early. The runtime could've been slightly shorter to maintain a tighter biopic, but it's a fitting tribute and I highly recommend you watch this. Like me, you don't need to be a fan of her to appreciate the complexity and intellectual narrative of this documentary.

Clifton Johnson A tragic look at fame, addiction and how one gifted young woman was destroyed by both. I cannot say that I found this film enjoyable, partly because almost every single shot came from the paparazzi. But I could not look away. None of us could.

Chris Brown With this documentary, Asif Kapadia and his team took on no easy task. In using stock footage and interviews with her peers to piece together the story of the late Amy Winehouse, there were several directions with which this film could have been taken, and I was pleasantly surprised with where the film ended up going. To exemplify, upon my initial hearing of the film's production, I feared that this would be nothing more than a layman's attempt at profiting off of the dramatization of an already dramatic and tumultuous set of circumstances surrounding a troubled artist. However, quickly into the film's run time, it became abundantly clear to me that this was not to be the case.While tackling the darker aspects of Amy Winehouse's life, which have unfortunately come to be a trademark of her's amongst the general public, Kapadia was capable of highlighting a natural and extraordinary musical talent. In this, the goal of the documentary is clear: to humanize the human being turned commercial entity, Amy Winehouse. Essentially, bursting at the seams with passion and soul, her voice was pure magic, but her life also turned extremely tragic. This film finds a way to appropriately balance both, which allows a special relationship to be built between Winehouse and audiences who watch it, particularly if they were not much familiar with her or her music prior. The documentary breaks your heart, but it also makes it hard not to fall in love with Amy.Now, the film also seems to pose a question; that being who is truly responsible for Amy's spiral into turmoil and untimely death? In attempting to answer this, the film places blame on several persons, including her ex-husband, her father, the world at large, and Amy herself. Ultimately, this is, in my opinion, a question not worth asking, as an argument for at least partial responsibility can clearly be attributed to all. Still, however, I am thankful for the exceptional job the film does in revitalizing and polishing the damaged reputation of one of modern music's greatest gifts and most devastating losses.

miriamday-35605 In 2012, a year after her death, Asif Kapadia was approached to make a 'warts and all' documentary about Amy Winehouse. The commission came from the label that owns the artist's back catalogue – Universal Music UK – whose CEO is an executive producer on the film. 'Amy' is now out on general release and has been critically acclaimed as a gritty and truthful portrait of the star.It's hard not to be moved by the film since it documents the rise and fall of a charismatic artist who is eminently watchable – and she is rarely off screen. The film is constructed around a chronological collage, starting with home videos and phone footage shot by family, friends and her first manager, Nick Shymansky, before she was famous.Mischievous, outspoken, funny, subversive and shy, she is recognisably 'Amy' in these early glimpses. But the apparent intimacy this lends the documentary is partly illusory since she is performing even then – as we all do in front of a camera. Little by little these informal shots give way to promotional interviews, concert footage before bigger and bigger audiences, and the scenes of her very public decline.Kapadia's interviews with her family, colleagues and friends are relegated to the sound track of this compelling montage. The technique does away with tedious 'talking heads' but at a price. Unable to see expressions or body language we lose any nuance – both in the self-justifications of her husband, father and tour manager and in the moving testimony of her two closest friends, the most 'reliable witnesses' in the film.What we are left with, then, is a montage of an 'Amy' knowingly on display but the notion that this is the 'real' Amy is reinforced rather than challenged by the perspectives of those who actually knew her. And the tale of the Amy on display is a familiar and abidingly popular one, as is evident by the clichés recycled in the rave reviews of the film: she is 'fragile', 'troubled', a moth drawn to a flame, a comet which burned bright and fell from the sky.At some point in the middle of the film it is casually revealed that Amy Winehouse suffered from Bulimia – an eating disorder which afflicts around 4% of the UK population and 5% of college- age women in the USA. Eating disorders are on the rise across the world and nine out of ten sufferers are women, driven into a destructive conflict with their own bodies by the desire to match the pre-pubescent figures beloved of the fashion industry. In the US three quarters of female alcoholics under the age of 30 also have eating disorders. The 20% who receive no help will die – like Karen Carpenter who starved herself to death at the age of 33. Seen in this context Amy Winehouse's 'story' is not so rock and roll after all; nor is it, sadly, unusual.What was unusual was her considerable talent and her reluctance to play the air-brushed celebrity game despite being in the public eye – where she was duly objectified, commodified, hounded and ultimately mocked. Her ruthless pursuit by the media is powerfully conveyed in the film, as is the gleeful jeering of 'personalities' like Graham Norton and Jay Leno. But here 'Amy' has its cake and eats it too: the film recycles intrusive images of her ravaged body and tormented face for us all to enjoy, indulging our morbid fascination from the moral high-ground of retrospective disapproval.These are the 'warts' that are offered up in this documentary, sanctioned as it is by Universal. The 'star is born' script of the female artist, heartbroken, led astray, too fragile to cope with the demands of fame – a cautionary tale familiar to us all and therefore easy to package and sell. We are even treated to footage of her corpse being carried out of her house on a stretcher, presumably in case we didn't realise she is dead.As a portrait of the public commodity Amy Winehouse, a sharp lyricist and musician with a great jazz voice, the film certainly delivers. How could it not? But there is a presumption of intimacy in the title which the film simply doesn't deliver. The most moving bit, for me, was the footage of her notorious last concert in Belgrade. Pushed to tour when she didn't want to, shoved into the spotlight when she should have been in hospital, she comes on stage and, for the first few minutes at least, resists the pressure to be 'Amy' and refuses to sing