amy

I watched Amy one lazy Saturday, the documentary by Asif Kapadia. I remembered how heartbroken I was when she died. I had just discovered her voice, its bluesy, jazzy power. And then she was gone. Self-destructed.

I read online that the movie was an unexpected hit in the U.K. I read that Adele wished she hadn't seen it. Amy had been an influence, but the last shots of her funeral stayed with her, hauntingly sad.

I wasn't sorry I'd watched it, but it did fill me with all kinds of primeval regret. A talent lost. A woman lost. Her idea of love so fatal it was like a snake eating its own tale. She believed in the consumption of it. She believed her boundaries must blur. She believed she needed to destroy herself with love.

Drugs were the vehicle, the symptom. Until they became an addiction, the desire for mindlessness. It was all so unfortunate, fated. Her parents were no kind of rudder neither, so concerned with the bubble she inhabited rather than the vulnerable person she was inside. The father in particular. What was he thinking?

I didn't know about the bulimia. A party trick to fool the culture creature? Maybe. I did know about the music, the achingly original and personal music. Not in a way I could justify in, say, an informed music review. But in how it made me feel.

The most heartrending moment in the film for me came backstage at the Grammys. Amy had just won her first. Her friend Juliette was proud and crying and full of emotion. Amy invited her up on stage and gave her a big hug, whispering in her ear in a blase voice: "It's all just so boring without drugs."

Verdict: Not easy to watch but a worthwhile movie. Amy was an artist first and foremost. She leaves that legacy at least.