The documentary Amy exceeded my expectations. Going in, I thought it would be an overly produced show emphasizing only her drug use. While it did heavily focus on her downward spiral, it refreshingly described and showed her youth. The home videos of her as a child and teenager demonstrated her innocence and pure love for singing jazz, which is all she wanted to do. The progression of events are undoubtedly sad after she gets noticed by a record label company. Although her romantic relationships also took a heavy toll on her, I think the film emphasized that it was a large combination of both dealing with heartache and being thrown into the spotlight in an unhealthy way. I found it interesting that, although she wanted to be successful, the type of success that found her only unfortunately eventually led to her untimely death.

Amy Winehouse’s passion and commitment were also significantly emphasized in the film. She repeatedly remarked that all she wanted to do was be a well-known jazz singer. The fact that she wrote all of her own songs really resonated with me. In this day and age, a vast majority of popular artists have their music written for them. I feel that this undermines the whole purpose of music, which is to express yourself. Although her broken heart and drug addiction were the main inspirations for many of her songs, she still managed to beautifully and understandably express her complicated and unique feelings. Although, in my opinion, she tried to use music as a sort of therapy, it was very unfortunate that she didn’t have a support system of the necessary strength to help her get into rehab sooner and stay there longer. I think she might still be alive today if she had had much stronger support, which is very sad to think about. I think anyone in general deserves a strong support system, let alone someone with mental health issues and a drug addiction. Because of this, the documentary affirmed to me that, because everyone is going through their own difficult issues, it is only worth being nice and helpful towards others, as it could help them more than we could potentially know.