In ‘I Am: Celine Dion,’ the legendary singer bares her soul, offering an unflinching look at her struggle with a rare neurological condition and her unwavering determination to reclaim her voice.
“I Am: Celine Dion”: A Profound Portrait of Vulnerability, Resilience and Self-Reclamation.
BY Henry-Damian Justice
July 22, 2024
1:30 am
As a young adult Nigerian who grew up in a largely Afrobeat-dominated cosmos, interest in ballad legends like French-Canadian singer Celine Dion is reasonably uncommon.
My indifference to show business and slice-of-life documentaries, which, as a writer and performing arts critic, shames me, made me approach “I Am: Celine Dion” with little more than a faint memory of “My Heart Will Go On” and knowledge of her health struggles. Minutes into the film, as I watched Dion writhe in pain during an emergency, my indifference dissolved into sympathy and belief.
It’s for this reason and more that I write this piece with my personal voice.
“I Am: Celine Dion” is the singer’s full-length naked revelation of her brutal reality: she battles a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome (SPS), an incurable spasm-inducing ailment. The timeline spans from her canceled 2021 Vegas residency to her public diagnosis announcement in December 2022 and, maybe more, though it’s quite unclear.
Those familiar with Celine Dion’s energetic, Statue of Liberty-like on-stage posture will be shocked by the raw vulnerability she exudes, something almost unthinkable for a woman of her caliber.
This is a woman sealed in the amber of music glory. She was the vocal standard for young singers growing up in the late ’90s and ensuing decades. She pulled millions into a trance once the flute of her Titanic hit “My Heart Will Go On” set off. She could record three or four songs a night like it was changing clothes. The Queen of power ballads.
Now, she struggles to coherently sing a few notes, the toll of her illness on her vocal muscles apparent breathing problems mean she lacks enough air to reach the high notes. If somehow you failed to jog your memory of the old Celine Dion, director Irene Taylor saves you the trouble by salting the 103-minute film with several glimpses of prime Dion on stage, seducing millions with her voice and energetic performances.
In a particularly poignant scene, Dion demonstrates the effects of SPS on her voice, followed by glimpses of her performing “My Heart Will Go On,” which cuts back to a present lone lady, a dim reflection of her former radiance. This juxtaposition between past and present is heart-wrenching.
As she walks past her staff in her Las Vegas mansion, where most of the filming takes place, lapses in her balance and coordination are painfully evident. She sifts through her memories: her husband René Angélil’s death, the birth of her children, her teenage life, and scores of performances from her 30-plus year career, relying on Taylor and editors Richard Comeau and Christian Jensen to do the trick.
To convey her open-mindedness and a whisper of normalcy in an otherwise tragic film, Dion is herself for much of the film, devoid of makeup, dyed hair, or elegant attire. The absence of talking heads – no colleagues, influenced artists, critics, or historians – places the focus squarely on Dion. Moments of genuine laughter with her twin sons and butler provide brief respite in an otherwise somber film.
The mother of three can’t help but confess her moments of doubt and identity crisis. “Who’s Celine Dion?” she asks in tears as she struggles to hit high notes that her healthy self would scoff at for being paltry. She tells us that her voice is the conductor of her life; she’s merely its follower. Being robbed of her smooth voice is like a lion without its mane, a leopard without its spots.
Amidst the countless doses of Valium, muscle contractions, and coverups for failed shows, Dion remains resolute and yearns for the performing curtains once more. “I still see myself dancing and singing… If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl. But I won’t stop. I won’t stop.” And indeed, she doesn’t. A couple of fitness and recording sessions later—which she barely gets through—her determination shines through.
The documentary’s hopeful tone in the final third would have calmed hearts were it not for a brutal ten-minute spasm session that reminds viewers of the illness’s permanence since it has no known cure. Ironically, her sports medicine therapist blames the attack on overstimulation by sound and stress. Those are words no world-renowned vocalist and performer like Dion would want to hear, let alone live with. Emotions, the very allies in her craft, contribute to her suffering.
Although Dion’s voice fails her, “I Am: Celine Dion” not only amplifies it in ways unimaginable but helps her reclaim it. Some vocalists would rather do community service than reveal vulnerabilities with their craft. More would even simply opt for glorifying documentaries, which seem to be the standard practice.
But Dion is not most artists. She shows that beneath all the wealth and fame, she is first human, before Celine. She suffers, like the rest of us, from anxiety and fear of the unknown. Knowing she may never sing again; she refuses to accept the truth. “Music, I miss it a lot,” she admits. It makes every second of music she records post-documentary a precious relic regardless of its texture.
In the end, one cannot help but shuffle through her extensive catalog, not necessarily to remind what was but to believe that the woman who sold over 250 million records and immortalized a tragic 1911 shipwreck might just overcome this. I do believe.
Date: June 21, 2024
Runtime: One hour, forty three minutes
Streaming Service: Amazon Prime
Director: Irene Taylor
Cast: Celine Dion
TNR Scorecard:
5/5