It’s horrific how carelessly we push people into the fire of celebrity, no matter how they beg for mercy. Amy Winehouse was one of the best vocalists of our generation, her music resonating across the world. She was such a talent, in fact, that her music was so masterful it muffled the cries for help she hid in plain earshot, in lyrics buried by the beauty of her own voice.

Asif Kapadia’s Amy forces us to give those songs another listen, revealing a “map to her story,” as he puts it. Upon closer inspection, “Rehab” isn’t a narco-chic pop anthem, but a shockingly literal account of the singer’s constant flirtation with death. The film examines the cold-blooded nature of showbiz and fame, how it took a humble, brilliant Jewish girl from North London and knocked her around so thoroughly that she fell face-first into self-destruction.

I spoke with Asif in San Francisco about the film, which is out nationwide this Friday.

Watching your movie, I was reminded of a moment when, following Britney Spears’ “shaved-head” meltdown in 2007, Craig Ferguson said on the Late Late Show that he refused to make Britney Spears jokes. He made a great speech about how we shouldn’t be kicking these people when they’re down.
That was a really strong piece he did. He was in recovery [himself]. I watched it recently. Someone sent it to me. Have you seen it recently on Youtube?

I have, yeah.
It’s really powerful. The person who sent me that link said, “This is how they should deal with it.” Absolutely right. Weirdly enough, this all joins together. The song they used as a soundtrack to Britney’s breakdown was “Rehab.” That’s how the song became famous in America. It was because of what was happening to Britney and Lindsay Lohan, I think. Nobody knew who sung the song, but Rehab was being used by all the TV shows.

He made that speech years ago, and the disheartening thing is that, today, a lot of talk show hosts who I find respectable and funny still make tasteless jokes about celebrities when they’re at their lowest. Why do you think we still do this?
I don’t know. It’s difficult, because the whole point of comedy is that you’re meant to be on the edge and push boundaries. It’s about challenging perceptions. But specifically about Amy, you realize she’s sick. When you realize someone’s having a breakdown or mentally unstable, it’s not so funny anymore. A lot of these comedians have issues themselves. They know it. With Amy it became really easy to make a joke about her. That’s when she’d become dehumanized.

Watching that footage of her turning her back on that huge audience was disturbing. I’d seen it before, but the way you present it strikes the appropriate tone.
I think that footage of Serbia is well-known, but what seemed to be interesting when we got into it was that everybody said Amy didn’t want to do the shows anymore. For some reason, the machine decided that she needed to. We had all seen it and thought, “What a mess. She’s on drugs, falling around. How pathetic.” That’s how people judged it and shared it. We found that it was Amy’s attempt to take control of the situation, sabotaging it on purpose. She decides not to sing and hang around on stage to make it as bad as possible, so that whole thing would stop. It’s very uncomfortable.

I like that the movie’s uncomfortable.
It’s meant to be. It wasn’t a comfortable story. It wasn’t a nice, “Aw. Isn’t that sad?” There’s much more going on here. The idea was to make the audience feel uncomfortable and culpable, somehow. Did we play a part in this? Were we complicit?

I think we are complicit as long as it’s trendy to knock troubled, famous people down for fun.
Exactly.

I’ve been a fan of Amy’s since the beginning, but I never noticed how plainspoken and autobiographical her lyrics were until I saw your movie. They sound poetic, but they’re surprisingly straightforward and literal.
The lyrics were one of the big revelations for me. Everyone talks about her voice, but I think writing is the most difficult thing. Writing something original and personal that stands the test of time. I think it’s the most difficult thing ever, and she managed to do that. She had these brilliant, literary references built into those songs. As pieces of writing, they’re incredible. And then she had the voice and turned them into something else. And she played guitar and [arranged] the music. You didn’t realize she did all of it.

Another thing that was revealed for me was her intellect. Super smart.
She was really sharp. That image of the girl at the end stumbling around…intellect wouldn’t be the word you’d use. But she was super smart. That was one of the major elements to try and re-dress the balance of how we perceive her, to show how funny and witty and intelligent she was. She didn’t start off messed up. A whole series of circumstances took her in that direction.

My favorite piece of footage is that cell phone video Amy’s friend took of her inside a car. Her friend talks about how she could make you feel like the most important person in the world one second and a nobody the next.
She’s flirting with him. Messing with him. She says, “You sort this out and sort that out, maybe you’d be ready to marry me.” She could switch on and off.

I always thought it was weird, the idea of a filmmaker getting to know somebody so intimately after they’re gone. I can’t imagine what that’d be like. Maybe I’d have dreams about this person or something.
That’s what happens, yeah, yeah. You start dreaming and they become a part of your life. It’s a very weird process that I’ve done twice now. I haven’t met Amy or Senna, but I’ve kind of spent a lot of time thinking about them and getting a taste of their lives in a way. Getting to know her friends, family, band members, husband…she feels like a friend of a friend now. It’s kind of a strange process. Very unusual.

Talk about why North Londoners like yourself have such a sense of pride when one of your own, like Amy, is successful on a grand stage.
She’s from a Jewish community in North London. I’m from a Muslim background, so it’s this sort of immigrant community. But also there’s something about it being creative. I was up the road from Camden, where she lived for a long time, and there was a very weird, edgy, creative period of time when lots of bands, models and writers were around. There were clubs, bars, pubs…people were hanging out there and there was a “scene” going on. There were drugs. It had an energy. It was the good and bad of London all mixed together. There was a darkness there.

Considering what you just described, Amy seems to be very much a product of that place and time.
She was drawn to it. She became one of the key people of that part of town. She’s almost synonymous with Camden.

I typically don’t like when music docs display song lyrics on-screen, but the way you do it is great because we need to see the lyrics to understand just how honest she’s being with us. The music’s so catchy that the words might otherwise be lost.
It’s a map to her story. It’s all there. You have to listen to some of them in a different way to understand her. That’s what I wanted to do, to make you realize the songs are much deeper than you thought when you understand her life more. If you tried playing it without the lyrics, you can’t help but get drawn in by the music, so you’ve got to pay attention to what she’s saying.

I remember dancing in the club to “Rehab.” Now I can see that she was calling out for help. I don’t know. That’s what made me most uncomfortable.
Absolutely. It’s meant to. We danced to these songs, but we didn’t understand what she was saying. It was a cry for help. I didn’t know any of this until I started making the film.

I liked how Yasiin Bey talked about having a crush on Amy.
I know! She had that way—everyone fell in love with her. Every journalist I met. She had some sort of charisma that people would fall for her. She had this way of making someone feel like they were the most important person in the universe. For that small amount of time, they had that connection. Then, it’s gone.

You explore some of her artistic anxiety as well. There’s that clip of her having a meltdown in the studio with Tony Bennett.
If Tony Bennett says she’s one of the greatest singers, he should know! He’s heard them all. He was there. That sequence is really powerful because it’s the first time she’s been in a studio for three years. You can see her confidence is rock-bottom. She always uses this figure of speech, “I don’t want to waste your time.” She always thinks she’s a waste of time.It’s a weird line to keep using. She says that again and again and again.

It’s a strange realization to come to that more and more from here on out, documentary films will pretty much make themselves. The historical equivalent to picking up the diaries of the deceased and publishing them; now we need only piece together the digitized documentation of people’s lives. This process is easiest when it comes to celebrities, barraged as they are by media attention, documented far beyond what they probably would wish for themselves, immortalized in the camera phones of the masses. Director Asif Kapadia scarcely supplements the hours of pre-existing film of Amy Winehouse in his documentary, Amy. Amy would be turning 32 this year, and because of her age—and her immense fame—there are hours of video featuring the talented singer from a young age all the way up until her untimely death. Wisely Kapadia focuses his documentarian eye—or should I say ear?—on Winehouse’s musical ability. While much of her best work was steeped in the pain of her experiences, what Kapadia makes clear is that it was likely the pain and abuse from those closest to her, not her stardom, that would eventually lead to her demise. This revelation makes the pain of losing so large a talent painfully fresh.

The film begins with Winehouse, aged 14, singing a beyond-her-years soulful rendition of “Happy Birthday” to a girlfriend. Her talent is obvious. She feigns some self-consciousness in front of the camera, but her natural showmanship can’t be denied. From there she is captured on camera phones and digital recorders at her first gigs, playing in bars, on car trips with her friends and her first manager, Nick Shymansky. Very little is professional footage. Once they get into the years where she was picking up some fame, there are a few TV spots and formal interviews with her, but not many. Interestingly, what they reveal is a girl who cared very little for what the public had to say. In one especially hilarious interview the camera shows Winehouse, eyes rolling, as a reporter tries to compare her work with another popular artist. Winehouse’s priorities were always clear and evident. She wanted to make her music. Just as clear throughout the film are Winehouse’s addictions, to both substances and unhealthy people.

Kapadia did 100 or so interviews to capture the complete story of Winehouse, who ran in a variety of circles, famous and non-famous. None of the interviews are shown on camera, but they act as narration for the film. The clear voice of influence in Winehouse’s life is that of her father, Mitch Winehouse. He speaks about his affair and eventual divorce of Winehouse’s mother. She speaks at one point of her father’s absence, her tone implying life was better off without him. Later footage makes it clear just how much his departure affected her. In the song that would eventually shoot her to stardom, “Rehab,” Winehouse’s lyrics flash across the screen “They tried to make me go to rehab… but if my daddy thinks I’m fine…” Throughout the film Winehouse’s lyrics are featured on-screen, the truth of her life seeping through each of them. “Rehab” is no different, with Amy’s friends describing the first time they tried to get her help for her alcoholism. She would only agree if her father told her to. He said she was fine, so she didn’t go. A pivotal moment before fame would sweep into her life, lessening the influence of those who cared for her.

The rollercoaster ride of Winehouse’s fame, her stormy and obsessive relationship with former husband Blake Fielder, her six Grammy award wins, all play out, merging into the moments the audience most remembers of her. Her shocked expression winning her first Grammy. Her TV performances. Her tiny body growing thinner with each magazine cover. It’s all excellent editing by Chris King (Senna, Exit Through the Gift Shop) who manages to take what is mostly shaky unprofessional footage of Winehouse and stretch it into a film. Kapadia and King hold on Amy’s expressions as her friends and family talk through her path of self-destruction and they act as the inner monologue we’ll never be able to hear from Winehouse directly. Juliette Ashby and Lauren Gilbert, Winehouse’s childhood friends, provide the best picture of Amy Winehouse the person and it’s their regrets and passion that bring the most emotion in the end.

The saddest and most compelling theme of the film, though, is the real example of the effects of an absent father on a growing girl. Not to place blame, but the film weaves its story firmly around Amy and Mitch’s relationship. Kapadia chose the right thread to run with. The argument that many of Winehouse’s issues stemmed from the all-too-real psychological impact of the lack of positive male affirmation and attention early in life fits her tragic tale. Her adoration—addiction even—to Fielder is further testament to the long-lasting effects. What first feels like it will be the story of fame-induced-ruin is actually a cautionary tale around a prevalent problem. Compounded, of course, by fame but rooted in the significance of having a support system with the right intentions.

There are a number of scenes at the end of the film where the strobe lights of paparazzi are disorienting and uncomfortable. And this isn’t the only way Kapadia seeks to get the audience to feel the tension of Amy Winehouse’s life. In Amy, he has crafted one of the most sincere depictions of the truth of celebrity and the truth that it’s not always fame that creates personal demons. No one who sees this film will leave wishing for notoriety.

There’s a certain sense of inevitability in the death of Amy Winehouse. Those who remember it all say the same thing, that it was both shocking and unsurprising at the same time. Kapadia poses the question to us all: How could someone watched so closely, so obviously at risk even, die practically before our eyes? And what is our complicity in her fate? No matter your level of admiration for her music, this is the message that makes Amy essential viewing.

When she passed away in 2011 at the mystically unlucky and considerably-too-young age of 27, musical artist Amy Winehouse left behind a huge following of admirers and fans. Her death was the sort that was all the more bitter in its feeling of inevitability. The singer/songwriter had struggled with alcoholism for many years, her visits to rehab made public by their obvious connection to her music and lyrics. But no matter how doomed she may have seemed, no one can deny the deep loss of a sincere and unique talent in the music world.

Now the acclaimed director of Senna and The Warrior, Asif Kapadia, has sliced together bits and pieces of footage of this deeply interesting women’s life into another of his deeply personal documentaries. Amy premiered at Cannes last week and has quickly become one of the most buzzed about films in competition this year. Already from the snippets put together in this first trailer the profound sadness of Amy Winehouse is deeply felt. Her rise to fame appears to be portrayed as something of a surprise occurrence to this highly artistic woman who only wanted to create the music she loved and got caught up (like so many have before her) in celebrity and expectation.

We know viewing this one will be a wrench in the heart, but Amy understood better than all of us what it means to go “back to black.”