The message of Amy Winehouse documentary: Look at what we did

The history of pop music is littered with far too many untimely demises. But for all the cultural lumping together of these tragedies, they're hardly as similar as we tend to believe.

In Amy, a new documentary about the late star Amy Winehouse, we learn just how unique and complicated a descent can be. That narrative helped the film earn a warm reception from critics and audiences at this month's Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered ahead of a worldwide release in June. But the portrayal turns out to sit a lot less well with some of those closest to its subject.

Winehouse was the preternaturally talented singer-songwriter who won accolades for her debut, Frank, when she was barely 20 and was considered a budding soul great just three years later, in 2006, with her Grammy-winning Back to Black. But she would never record another studio album and died in 2011 at age 27 from alcohol poisoning.

Directed by fellow Londoner Asif Kapadia, the film paints a portrait of Winehouse that goes well beyond the rise-and-fall stories of other tragic music figures. Yes, there were enablers, such as ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, who said in a 2013 media interview that he introduced her to hard drugs. (She became convinced, one friend said, that she had to be "on his level".)

And Winehouse's father, Mitch, is presented unflatteringly in Amy as a hard-driving, self-glorifying stage parent who pushed his daughter to keep performing even when it was clear she needed help.

But the nuanced argument Amy makes is that it was a broader set of cultural factors that were also culpable in her undoing. Winehouse was subject to a relentless stream of late-night television jokes, paparazzi stalking, social-media snarking and tabloid drooling, and it soon overwhelmed her.