MOVIE REVIEW: AMY

4/5

Amy Winehouse had been a wild child even before she made the news or number one charts around the globe. What lies beneath her incredible talent? When we get up close, who are the judges when a young person's destiny is on the scales? And despite Amy's great talent and riches, those scales are not tilting in her favour.

There is an important thing that the documentary by Asif Kapadia had achieved, and it is making the audience to identify with a legend. The doubts, the pain, the happiness and the magical moments of being on top of the world - it is all real in a clever composition of family archive videos, rare footage and recordings. 

While Amy's father Mitch Winehouse referred to the film as "preposterous", the documentary is a treasured portrait of a disturbed and vulnerable artist, who had travelled a long journey from being a club singer to the great heights of the world's fame. This documentary's deceptively simple layout and cinematography gives you a cinematic understanding, what it was like to be Amy Winehouse and a better comprehension of the outcome of her life.

With a single criticism of being too long, AMY is a better biopic than an acting re-imagining could afford. Gearing to a heart wrenching final, the tragedy will not leave you unscarred. There's little could be done to change the flow of the events in Amy's life, and without greater focus on higher topics, the film touches lightly upon inevitability of fate.

As the choices are made and the dust is settled, we get one raw life story and a legend to aspire to. With its focus and precision, AMY is a hallmark of documentary making, that gives us the portrait of this great artist the way she deserves.