Listening to Amy's music, it's easy to forget just how young she was. At a time when Gwen Stefani and Kelly Clarkson were topping the charts, her voice seemed to be broadcast to us from a generation that our parents or grandparents might have recognized. But Amy was just a kid before fame was thrust upon her and had its way with her. The movie begins in the year 2001, when she was just 17 and her manager, Nick Shymansky, was 19. Over the next decade, we watch fame consume someone who clearly never wanted it and does not have the maturity or emotional support to cope with it. Under the weight of rapidly increasing attention and expectations, early red flags of her substance abuse and eating disorders go unnoticed. By the time they become life-threatening, celebrity culture completes its cycle of creation and destruction, happy to make lazy quips about her downward spiral playing out on a public stage.Her impending and premature death loom over this entire film. About an hour in, each new scene feels like it could be the conclusion to this heartbreaking biography. In a small way, it captures the anxiety of having a loved one in recovery and never knowing when you're going to get that call.The fact that there is no happy ending to this story makes it a difficult movie to watch, but you also get immersed in what a rare personality and talent she really was. I did not realize how much I had missed her.

I was initially daunted by the 120 minute running time of this film, but I was glued from beginning to end and felt as if I had been watching it for about half that time. I have never seen anything like this before. It was like watching Breaking Glass with Hazel O'Connor or Stardust with David Essex, but they were fictitious stories acted out for entertainment, and this was real people with a real star and yet such a familiar rags-to-riches story with a tragic ending. And because the story is the stuff of 'rock star' urban legends, you think that someone is going to step in to prevent the inevitable, and yet that never happens.I say that the people in this film are real, but that is not entirely the case, because it has been skillfully edited to present villains and good guys: those who are motivated by money, fame or drugs; and those, like Amy herself, who are driven by love. I don't think that you are supposed to believe these caricatures, this is just the film-maker's view of Amy's story, and I am sure that every single person involved would tell a different tale from the one we are presented with in this film. And for me, that is what makes it extraordinary, because although it is a documentary that presents a gripping true story played out by real people in real life, it is predominantly an art-form giving one person's perspective just like a novel or a painting does.I would just like to add that I am an Iron Maiden fan who has never listened to Amy Winehouse in my life. She had a amazing voice, but her style was not to my taste. That does not in any way detract from the brilliance of the film or, indeed, Amy herself.

I have known my share of addicts. Even though Amy was famous, she was no different than any other addicts. I am glad the film makers showed her as not just an out of control addict. She knew what she was which is what makes it even more heartbreaking. She was a kind, beautiful lost soul. May she RIP and find the peace she could not find on this Earth.

Film is one means of probing a truth content of a subject matter. Although documentary and drama framed movies (and there are hybrid types of doc/dramas) are different approaches are there particular characteristic features that distinguish them from each other? Watching Amy and Janis, two feature docs, made me think about the differences between drama and doc as film expression. Documentaries seem to be a particular type of film expression that lays claim to the actual. But documentary films in relation to: subject matter, contents, structure and even form are often substantially the same as drama. So, what of a film like Kapadia's Amy whose content comprises only of actual documented footage and archive material without any externalities of input such as voice over or extraneous music. You might think that produced in this form using only originary primary material that Amy's expressive content makes it completely distinct from any drama based production. However it might be possible to make a film, that used only actual material originating as documentary or archive recordings, whose purpose was to produce an intentional fabrication. You might call such a film a piece of propaganda (Riefenstahl's work for Hitler) or perhaps a fabricated documentary and the latter type of production would almost certainly borrow heavily from dramatic form to fabricate its story, and to that extent would present many of the markers of a drama in making its claim to present truth content. In relation to Kapadia's 'Amy: the girl behind the name', this is the sort of claim that has been made by some of her family. The overwhelming pressure on film makers from distributors producers commissioners is to have a strong story line. Narrative is king. So both drama and documentary types of film have to conform. To find the line through the material that best delivers a story. To disregard elements that don't fit the story, to draw out their characters in those expressive clips that clearly define their role in the story. This pressure is most strongly exerted on contemporary documentary makers, looking for theatrical release, whose editing of originatory material now has to comply with the rules of dramatic form.Both Amy and Janis conform to the pre-packaged populist narrative of the tragedy of the flawed female performer. The message that female emotional frailty combined with isolation and inability to cope with the ravaging demands made by the image of success, lead on to recourse to drink drugs and death. Both films in their different ways package this story and present it as the primary truth content without too much complication or digression. The music of Janis and Amy is folded into the warp of both films. Music which is intense and personal, expressive of states of mind embedded in the films, but not necessarily definitive of either singers' life. It is perhaps in the expectations of the audience, rather than form, that documentary and dramatic material may be significantly different. Audiences for films presented as docs are more concerned with the truth content of the material. Audiences for drama, more concerned with dramatic effect.Dramatic productions are subject I think to different criteria of appraisal by their audiences. In dramatic performances, actors are appraised for their bodies, their physiques, their voices, the delivery of their lines (sincere, authentic) and their mimicking abilities. In dramatic scripts the audience is happy to accept a large measure of dramatic license in the film scenario. Dramas are understood as fabrications. For the audience the issue is whether at some level the drama can be understood as sincere and authentic. In a film presented as a documentary, the audience attends the material with a different subjectivity. In docs the makers and contributors are judged almost exclusively for their honesty. In the documentary film the audience to some extent play a forensic role, almost a type of jury, examining the film looking for signs confirming the veracity, the relatedness, the frankness, the repleteness and moral stature of interviewees and material as it is presented Amy comprises an overwhelming intimacy. The film consists of home movie footage, archive and selfie material: a door, an opening into Amy's life. It presents as intrusion: like looking through someone's diary or going through their room. The mood created is one of privileged access to the private sphere, a construed invasion of privacy. The film, reinforced with Amy's self referential songs defines the mood of its expressive material shaping it into a tragedy, that entwined emotionally with her music, tells the story of the inevitable rise decline and death of Amy Whitehouse. Berg's 'Janis…' also makes use of archive and personal footage. At the core of the film's narrative drive are the songs, interpreted and re-informed by extensive use made of interviews with those who knew and worked with her. The songs speak for themselves: the emotional authenticity of the story of 'Janis'. But the interviews seem to me less satisfactory. They all conform to the expected image of Janis, and come across as perspectives of the past seen through the filter of the present. A present where the hot issues of the past, its conflicts and antagonisms, have all comfortably melded. The interviews seem to reconstruct an idealised version of Janis that seems at odds with an actual Janis, a demanding out of control hurricane of life.Both Amy and Janis are formulaic but each offers a quite difference experience of subjectivity to the viewer. Amy asks the viewer to conspire with the film makers conceit that their film allows them to understand the music by allowing them into the domain of the private. Janis, keeps the viewer on the outside of the material, asking them to understand the music by believing the word of a number of interviewees talking many years after the events they are remembering.