Amy Winehouse: What Really Happened. Documentary Review

A damaged artist in a self destructive path. Music heard and loved around the world. The young girl that was her was gone and has spiraled down into a different life. The music from her life is slowly disappearing and turning into turmoil. Her life is slowly crumbling and people want to know why. The documentary "Amy Winehouse: What Really Happened" shows the hidden truth about the sadly late soul singer artist, Amy Winehouse.

 

This documentary focuses on the life of the late life of Amy Winehouse and how her life turned from the aspiring young singer into the life of a hardcore drug user. The documentary uses many of Amy's friends and family to serve as background information for her life. It explores the reasons of her downfall and how she got in her position. The documentary starts with how she got herself into the music business and then changes the tone into exploring more of her personal life by telling her relationships and how they related to her music. Near the end it explores her drug use and relationship with Blake Civil. 

  The documentary shows a little bit of Amy's life as a child through interviews and shots like this.It's a close up of Amy's essay in her school. It reads a powerful message when she was 12 and it showed her dreams to become an aspiring singer and to " want people to hear her voice and just forget their troubles for 5 minutes". 

It is also shown through the stories from her dad. He says a lot on where her music influence came from. The dad talks a lot about listening to Frank Sinatra and having her finish the songs while singing with him. This allows a lot more insight in her musical influence in life.

This shot in particular has a Frank Sinatra song playing in the background and it relates to the previous scene with the dad talking about music. The images during the song are B-roll that shows scenic sights that intensify the sound of the music.

Near the middle to the end it begins to highlight Amy's downfall and her struggles. In the picture to her left, it shows Amy, drunk, performing badly in front of a live audience. It uses previously recorded videos to provide evidence of the spiraling life. The next photo although shows her singing very well in front of a live audience. It is said that the reason for this is because of her boyfriend, Blake Civil, being in the audience. This shows the kind of impact that this man has on Amy's life. He has to be there for her to perform well and to please the crowd. This shows us her inner thoughts allows us to understand more of Amy herself.

This scene in the background plays one of Amy's song with the matching music video while her explaining her spiraling life. Amy's songs are said to tell her life story and the setting and story of this music video is very true. It relates to a real life event in Amy's life. In which she stayed in motel for 48 hours when Blake had seemingly left her. The use of her own work describing herself further intensifies the meaning that the film is trying to portray. It allows us to her in her vision. She tells her own story through songs and videos played throughout the film.

 

This is a testimonial of one of Amy's friends and he talks about how Amy loved being in the papers. He talks about her love to be in the attention of the paparazzi's and even had brought them tea and biscuits one night. This attention ended up to be her downfall as the paparazzi's caught everything that was wrong with her. 

This documentary came out to be a very informative and insightful look into the life of late Amy Winehouse. I took interest in this documentary because it is about one of my favorite artists. The provided information taught me about her life as a musician and her life as a drug user. This documentary was very effective in getting its point across and presenting the viewer with necessary information that would intrigue any fan. I recommend this documentary if you are a fan or want to know the story of the great artist, Amy Winehouse.