Asif Kapadia’s documentary Amy features never-before-seen footage and over 100 interviews with people from singer Amy Winehouse’s personal and professional life. It is a heartbreaking up-close-and-personal look at a woman who, as Tony Bennett says in the movie, didn’t live long enough to learn how to live.
Kapadia may be best known as the filmmaker behind the BAFTA winning documentary Senna but says, “It’s funny, but I am really a drama guy.”
His docs are structured like feature films. Amy, for instance, plays on a few levels, featuring several dramatic arcs. It’s a cautionary tale of the effects of international stardom. It’s a portrait of drug addiction, exploitation and a woman who looked to men for protection, and chose badly. It’s the story of Amy, a fiercely talented person who laid her heart bare in her art only to have the thing that should have been her saviour, her music, ultimately be her undoing.
When I asked Kapadia if he looked at other music docs before beginning work on Amy he said, “I don’t have references I look to. I just kind of make it up as I’m going along. For example, in the sequence with the paparazzi, I’m thinking of Raging Bull, with flashguns going off. I’m not thinking of a doc where you have someone’s life and then they pick up a guitar and sing.”
Here’s a list of other music bios—some docs, some features—that take a dramatic approach and give a complete look at the personal and creative lives of their subjects.
Anvil: The Story of Anvil: It would be easy to call Anvil a real-life Spinal Tap. The story of the heaviest heavy metal band you’ve never heard of bears a strong resemblance to the legendary fictional band, but it is so much more than that. It is a story of passion, of trying to beat the odds, of friendship, of hope against hope. It’s also quite funny and the music will peel the paint off your home theatre walls.
I’m Not There: It’s an elliptical and metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman, played by Cate Blanchett. Yet I felt I knew more about what makes Bob Dylan tick when I left the theatre than I did about Johnny Cash following Walk the Line or Ray Charles after Ray.
Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap: A vibrant look at the art of hip hop, the first documentary from Ice-T profiles the passion of the grandmasters of rap: Afrika Bambaataa, Treach Criss, Doug E. Fresh, KRS-One, Dr. Dre and more. Worth it to hear Snoop Dogg’s (now Snoop Lion) songwriting methodology: “I need to smoke a lot of weed, and have a couple girls there because I like looking at them.”
Get on Up: James Brown was known as many things; The Godfather of Soul, Soul Brother No. 1, Mr. Dynamite and The Hardest Working Man in Show Business but he preferred to be called Mr. Brown. His rise from poverty to the top of the R&B charts is brought to life in a knock out performance from Chadwick Boseman, who plays Brown from age 16 to 60.
Rock ’n’ roll and the movies have always had an uneasy relationship. For every film that hits all the right notes, like Quadrophenia or A Hard Day’s Night, there’s a host of tone-deaf films like Light of Day, featuring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett as musical siblings, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a glam-rock-and-disco re-imagining of the Beatles classic.
Rock ’n’ roll biographies are equally hit-and-miss. In The Buddy Holly Story, the toothy Gary Busey earned an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the rock legend, but Roger Ebert sneered that Dennis Quaid played Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire “as a grinning simpleton with a crazy streak.”
This weekend, Jersey Boys — directed by Clint Eastwood, and based on the Tony Award-winning musical — tells the story of ’60s hitmakers The Four Seasons. Songs like Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like A Man and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You made them one of the biggest-selling rock acts of all time.
Lesser known than the Four Seasons but louder, faster and dirtier were The Runaways, the subject of a rambunctious 2010 movie. Set back when you could still drink a bottle of stolen booze in the shade of the Hollywood sign, The Runaways focuses on two glue-sniffing, tough girls named Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) who formed the underage all-girl band. The music of The Runaways was described as the “sound of hormones raging,” and this film captures that.
I’m Not There is a hard movie to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard-issue Hollywood biopics, there is nothing linear here, but then there is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie.
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is the title of eccentric English singer Ian Dury’s biggest hit and the 2010 biopic about his eventful life. Starring Andy Serkis, the film is as high voltage as one of Dury’s legendary live performances.
Finally, the film Control details the short life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis (Sam Riley). After seeing the film at Cannes, Curtis’s bass player Peter Hook said he knew the movie “would be very well received because, even though it’s two hours long, only two people went to the toilet the whole time. In fact, one of them was (Joy Division founding member) Bernard (Sumner). The other one was a 70-year-old woman.”
This is a hard one to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. It’s a long, strange trip down memory lane with one of the most enigmatic characters of the 20th century.
Director Todd Haynes has assembled an all star cast to embody different segments of the folk singer’s life. When we first meet the Dylan character he is portrayed by a 13-year-old African-American child (Marcus Carl Franklin) obsessed with folk music. Later he’s glimpsed in his Pat Garret and Billy the Kid stage, played in that sequence by Richard Gere. British actor Ben Whishaw punctuates the proceedings, popping up now and again spouting the kind of elliptical nonsense that often make Dylan’s interviews an exercise in frustration.
Cate Blanchett is deservedly being touted for an Oscar nomination—will it be Best Actor or Actress?—for her take on the caustic, amphetamine-fueled Dylan circa 1965. In one of the more literal sequences Batman portrayer Christian Bale is Jack, a folk singer who embraces Christianity, eschewing the life of a music star to become an evangelist.
A bit murkier is Heath Ledger’s story thread featuring him as a chauvinistic movie star with a mysterious French girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg).
How does it all relate to Dylan, the mumbling superstar who has made a career of keeping people guessing about his personal life? It’s hard to say, because as you may have guessed the movie isn’t a traditional biopic. What Haynes has done here is create a kind of tone poem using different elements from Dylan’s life to create an overall feel for this mysterious and elliptical character.
Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard issue Hollywood biopics, I’m Not There doesn’t offer up an obvious timeline of the man’s life. There is nothing linear here, or even connected in many cases. Using a variety of styles from Warholian Pop Art to Godard’s jump-cuts and cinéma vérité, Haynes has cobbled together a portrait of the essence of Dylan. There is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie. It’s fascinating stuff, and while some may find it frustrating, I felt I knew more about what makes Bob Dylan tick when I walked out of the theatre after I’m Not There than I did for Johnny Cash following Walk the Line or Ray Charles after Ray.
At almost three hours it’s a taxing movie, but for the patient, the adventurous and the curious I’m Not There offers many pleasures from the amazing soundtrack to Cate Blanchett’s superior performance.
This is a hard one to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. It’s a long, strange trip down memory lane with one of the most enigmatic characters of the 20th century.
Director Todd Haynes has assembled an all star cast to embody different segments of the folk singer’s life. When we first meet the Dylan character he is portrayed by a 13-year-old African-American child (Marcus Carl Franklin) obsessed with folk music. Later he’s glimpsed in his Pat Garret and Billy the Kid stage, played in that sequence by Richard Gere. British actor Ben Whishaw punctuates the proceedings, popping up now and again spouting the kind of elliptical nonsense that often make Dylan’s interviews an exercise in frustration.
Cate Blanchett is deservedly being touted for an Oscar nomination—will it be Best Actor or Actress?—for her take on the caustic, amphetamine-fueled Dylan circa 1965. In one of the more literal sequences Batman portrayer Christian Bale is Jack, a folk singer who embraces Christianity, eschewing the life of a music star to become an evangelist.
A bit murkier is Heath Ledger’s story thread featuring him as a chauvinistic movie star with a mysterious French girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg).
How does it all relate to Dylan, the mumbling superstar who has made a career of keeping people guessing about his personal life? It’s hard to say, because as you may have guessed the movie isn’t a traditional biopic. What Haynes has done here is create a kind of tone poem using different elements from Dylan’s life to create an overall feel for this mysterious and elliptical character.
Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard issue Hollywood biopics, I’m Not There doesn’t offer up an obvious timeline of the man’s life. There is nothing linear here, or even connected in many cases. Using a variety of styles from Warholian Pop Art to Godard’s jump-cuts and cinéma vérité, Haynes has cobbled together a portrait of the essence of Dylan. There is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie. It’s fascinating stuff, and while some may find it frustrating, I felt I knew more about what makes Bob Dylan tick when I walked out of the theatre after I’m Not There than I did for Johnny Cash following Walk the Line or Ray Charles after Ray.
At almost three hours it’s a taxing movie, but for the patient, the adventurous and the curious I’m Not There offers many pleasures from the amazing soundtrack to Cate Blanchett’s superior performance.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
