Eyes wide shut | 2 July 2015

Asif Kapadia’s documentary about Amy Winehouse, whom Tony Bennett describes as ‘one of the truest jazz singers that ever lived’, and who died of alcohol poisoning at 27 (FFS), is masterly and gripping, which is a pity, as you can’t look away. You will want to look away, and may even yearn to do so once the heroin comes into play, and the crack, and that husband and that gig in Belgrade, when she was all unsteady, shuffling and broken beneath the big hair, but you can’t. Oh, Amy, I kept thinking, if only — if only — you’d said, ‘Yes, yes, yes’. It is almost unbearable in this way.

Kapadia’s previous documentary, Senna, which traced the life of the doomed motor-racing star Ayrton Senna, and rightly won many awards, was also heartbreaking and painful, but not as heartbreaking and painful as Amy. Perhaps this is only because Ayrton meant nothing to me personally, whereas I was crazy for Winehouse from the moment I first heard her, which, you won’t be surprised to hear, was way after everyone else. (I am always last to the party — always.) That voice. That tiny body, and that voice, with its brilliantly weird transitions and phrasings, surging up from somewhere. Here, Kapadia tells her story in the same way he told Senna’s story. That is, he has combined existing footage (home videos, newsreels, performances, chat-show appearances) with off-screen talking heads and the result is so flawlessly orchestrated it feels as if the film was born this way, was simply there for the taking, even though it wasn’t; even though hours and hours of footage must have been pored over, and hours and hours of interviews conducted. This is a miracle of editing, as built into a powerfully compelling narrative. We know what will happen, yet it still plays out suspensefully, like a thriller.