VIDEO: Watch a Fresh-Faced Amy Winehouse Sing "Happy Birthday" at Age 14

Most people remember Amy Winehouse as a drug-addled train wreck who became known more for the tabloid headlines she'd generate than her music.

But in the new documentary Amy, director Asif Kapadia is determined to cast her in a new light: as a brilliant musician whose talents vanished too soon.

Case in point? Check out the film's opening scene, which features a 14-year-old Winehouse channeling Marilyn Monroe as she sings "Happy Birthday" to a friend at her birthday party. "The film begins with [Amy and her friends] just messing around at a birthday party, and they're just kids," Kapadia told E! Online.

Photos: Amy Winehouse through the years

"It was all there. It was perfectly formed at the age of 14," he adds. "She had it all already. It's only two years later she was then performing. It's only three years later she's having these really intense relationships and making songs out of them. ... You can see already she was a mature girl at 14. So that opening scene, I think, makes a lot of people go 'Wow.'"

Winehouse died in 2011 at age 27. The cause of death was determined to be alcohol poisoning.