I Am: Celine Dion. A Review

I AM: CELINE DION

I should, in the interest of total disclosure, begin my I Am: Celine Dion review by saying that I frankly do not like her music. In her catalog, I find only two songs that I actually like: A New Day Has Come and her cover of I Drove All Night. Apart from that, I have been known to occasionally walk out of the room if a Celine Dion song is playing, in particular her signature song, Titanic's My Heart Will Go On. I find her singing at times bombastic, grandiose, and the songs overall rather milquetoast. I also have to recognize that she is highly beloved and admired for her admittedly powerful voice. I Am: Celine Dion takes us into her private world, one shaken by a very rare disease that may cripple her body but not her spirit.

After a jokey faux interview by her son Nelson, we then shift to a truly shocking sight: Celine Dion in the grips of a terrifying attack from her Stiff Person Syndrome. This illness, which affects one in a million people, leaves Dion crippled, in great pain and totally immobilized. It is a jarring moment before we go to One Year Earlier, 2021.

We are informed that Dion has had to cancel her Las Vegas residency, but now we hear from the Canadian chanteuse about her life pre-and-post diagnosis. She was diagnosed seventeen years prior but kept working as long and as hard as she could. It did, however, force her and her team to concoct reasons for cancelling shows, something that she loathed to do. "It's not hard to do a show," she observes in one of the many interviews, "it's hard to cancel a show". Obviously distraught at both having to cancel a show and lying about the reason, Dion nevertheless attempts to keep things going.

We look over her past and present: her early life in Quebec as the member of a family of 14 children, her various outfits, the songbook and her devotion to her stage and home families. She even shows us that she is perfectly in on the joke, such as her song Ashes for Deadpool 2 and the spoofing of My Heart Will Go On and Titanic on The Late Late Show with James Corden.  

In the midst of all the humor and love of performing, SPS still wreaks havoc on her life and career. The voice is not as strong as it was. Her physical ability to sing and perform are weakened. After attempting to record a new song, Love Again, we see a crisis owing to her SPS. Despite this, Celine Dion is determined to keep singing. 

Again, I am nowhere near a Celine Dion fan. However, as much as I may not care for her massive ballad catalog, one finishes I Am: Celine Dion with great respect for Dion's professionalism and devotion to her fans. As she talks about having to create false stories to mask the real reason for cancellations, you can see how much it hurt her to lie to the fans. She is fully aware that people have come from far away, spent a great deal of money, and rearranged their schedules to see her live. As such, when she was forced to withdraw due to the stiff person syndrome, the knowledge that she, even inadvertently, caused great disappointment to people that love her moves her to tears. 

It is difficult to see the two crises of SPS that I Am: Celine Dion has the courage to show. As this powerhouse performer, we see her dominating the stages. Now, we see her totally incapacitated, inaudible, clearly distressed to terrified, unable to do anything except perhaps weep in sadness and frustration. Her medical team with medication and soothing talk work to get her to return to physical control. While they succeed, it is still very painful to see, and one imagines far harder to endure. 

I Am: Celine Dion is a brave revelation of one woman's struggle with a rare disease and her determination to keep doing what she clearly loves: sing. These moments of vulnerability, of seeing not the glamourous diva but the vulnerable woman, elevate director Irene Taylor's documentary. Those are the good moments.

The bad, or perhaps more curious, moments are when we are treated to a tour of her Citizen Kane-like warehouse of her artifacts. I can, with some reluctance, look through Madame Angelil's stage couture and hear about her love of shoes (she confesses she has bought shoes that do not fit because she clearly loves them). Do I or anyone else really need to know that she keeps every piece of artwork done by her children? I simply was bored by her waxing rhapsodic on the need for a sleeveless outfit to work with her grand stage costume. I also could have done without a curious section where she goes over various events on her calendar with her team.

One of them involved sending a videotaped 100th birthday wish to one Dorothy. I was thoroughly puzzled over who "Dorothy" was, or why Dion was sending her birthday wishes on Dorothy's centennial as if Dion were the Queen. 

Moreover, while unintentional, that her twins are named Nelson and Eddy made me think that she and her late husband Rene named them after American baritone and actor Nelson Eddy. They didn't, but as odd as it sounds that her twin's names are Nelson and Eddy, conjuring images of Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald singing an operetta was hard to shake.

Given the scope of her career and the courage she has shown in her struggle with stiff person syndrome, one would have to be terribly unfeeling to not think Celine Dion is, if nothing else, courageous. I left I Am: Celine Dion with greater respect and admiration for someone who values professionalism and respects her craft and audience. That, after this diagnosis, she still had fierce determination to continue singing makes one admire her more even if one is not a fan of her music.

Given all we know now about Celine Dion's physical troubles, that she was able to dominate the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony with her performance at the Eiffel Tower makes one respect and admire her all the more. It was as if she was carried by sheer will to show that she could still perform at great heights, figuratively and literally. Her rendition of Hymne a l'amour did not close out I Am: Celine Dion, but it might serve as the unofficial theme to this premiere chanteuse Quebecoise. 

DECISION: B-