Asif Kapadia has created an entreaty to the impossible: letting the dead speak for themselves
In its re-assemblage of Kurt Cobain, Montage of Heck slaps together unheard recordings, private snippets of the Nirvana frontman’s poetry, and even home video footage. The end result is a chilling “what if” that reimagines Cobain’s biography from his perspective, a film that manages to be both essential 2015 viewing while aimed almost exclusively at a niche audience. It might be the only worthwhile music documentary this year, too were it not for Amy, which plays this Thurs as part of WUD Film’s Marquee Film Festival.
As its title bears out, Amy is a blunt revisitation of the life and music career of Amy Winehouse, the British jazz singer who ascended to pop music celebrity in the mid-aughts only to have her star fade and fizzle with tabloid drama, drug abuse and tempestuous relationships. And make no mistake, Winehouse’s struggles are inextricable from the infectious laid back sass of her music. Asif Kapadia is interested in all of it and like Montage of Heck, the director works chronologically, beginning with a 15 year-old video of Winehouse singing happy birthday. It’s a quiet but no less surreal moment, a seemingly meaningless home video turned into a humble reassurance of her talents. Kapadia shies away from documentary’s stale cookie-cutter form, sticking to recovered videos, live performances and audio extracts from offscreen subjects. These latter inclusions are also the most voluminous, pulling from conversations with Winehouse herself, her family and friends, former associates and even record industry moguls. Overt authorial control peeks through with title cards identifying the voices we hear, but this is absolutely devoid of talking heads, speeding through an entire lifespan in a surreal two hours.
The results are both dazzling and mortifying. Winehouse’s ups and downs with her former husband Blake Fielder — who bears some of the blame for the introduction of drugs — are a preface of bad poems, tabloid photos, and regrettable tattoos that show how they fueled Winehouse’s 2006 breakthrough, Back to Black. As she records the title track with producer Mark Ronson, the audio switches between the final recording’s polish and snippets from candid in-studio footage, all in real time. It’s an amazing moment and a far cry from Kapadia’s nastier yet no less pertinent associations. At one point, Winehouse’s mother recalls her daughter’s struggles with body image as back-stage footage rolls of her tying a sash on her dress a little too tightly.
Beyond their personal source material, Amy and Montage of Heck share something else, too. At the start of a comeback tour in 2011, a visibly intoxicated Winehouse appeared on stage in Belgrade and refused to perform. It’s devastating to watch and while the roundtable of voices all offer explanations for the public meltdown, Kapadia shies away from definitive judgments. Admirably, Amy offers no final word on her depression or her bulimia, her aversion to celebrity or her lack of support structures. Like the title, it’s all just there, an entreaty to the impossible: letting the dead speak for themselves.
- Amy plays Thurs, Nov 12 at 9:15p as part of WUD Film’s Marquee Film Festival in Union South. We’re covering the program all this week with our friends at Madison Film Forum. Admission is FREE.