This is not a tightly controlled celebrity vanity project misleadingly packaged as a ‘documentary’. See Beckham and Harry & Meghan – both on Netflix. Instead Prime Video’s I Am: Céline Dion is a raw, heartbreaking and deeply moving window into the reclusive life of a once-in-a-generation talent cut down in its prime.
Whether power ballads are your jam or not, you can’t help but like Céline Dion. She is intense, theatrical and speaks in highly memeable couplets, often breaking into song mid-sentence. She’s delightfully eccentric, a bit odd, and the need to perform – it is painfully obvious to see – runs through her very blood. “My voice was the conductor of my life – you lead the way, I’ll follow you,” she says.
We join Dion, 56, in her grand but hideously decorated Las Vegas mansion where she is being casually interviewed by her twin sons, Nelson and Eddy, 13. Her greying hair is scraped back, she is makeup-free and the sun-drenched closeup shows every crinkle and blemish.
She’s smiling and still beautiful but she looks frail. It is a slap in the face when spliced with archive footage of her blasting out impossibly high notes and gyrating on stage in skintight leather. Her fall from being a true powerhouse is illustrated with an upsetting scene of Dion rigid, frozen and in despair being carted out by paramedics.
The diva (meant in all the most complimentary ways) has Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS). A progressive neurological condition so rare it affects one in a million. It causes severe muscle stiffness, paralysing spasms and chronic pain. This is the thrust of the unflinching documentary directed by Irene Taylor – rather than a gentle, celebratory walk through of Dion’s greatest hits, this is a story of her anguish and desperation to get her voice back.
We, the public, first learned of her struggles in late 2022 when she was forced to cancel her Courage world tour, but it is revealed she has been hiding her pain for 17 years. The first sign something wasn’t right: all of a sudden she couldn’t reach the notes and gradually she lost complete control of not just her voice but of walking, swallowing and even breathing.
Particularly fascinating to hear were the decoy tactics she used to employ in those worst-nightmare moments where she found herself on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans with her voice giving up. She would hold the mic out to the audience for them to finish the song, she would tap the mic as if it was faulty or sometimes she would simply just leave the stage and never return.
At one point she was taking 90 milligrams of valium a day. “And that was just one of the medicines. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but I could have died,” she says.
Adding to the heartbreak of being cut down in her prime, she says she feels she has to live as a recluse in case she is spotted by fans who might be angry that she has cancelled shows and tours. “I’m stuck,” she says.
To demonstrate how restricted her vocal range has become, she tries to sing for Taylor – in that hairs on the back of your neck Céline Dion style that we all know and love. Yet, what comes out is strained and cracking. It sounds awful. She weeps, distraught.
Later in the documentary she’s back in the recording studio attempting again to sing and at times her voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper. During the listen back her face crumples and her bottom lip quivers as she hears it. She is a woman defeated.
Except she’s not. Towards the end of the documentary she suffers a prolonged and agonising seizure. Taylor films it for 10 minutes. Her body is completely contracted as if rigor mortis has set in, she is unblinking, face twitching, tears streaming, groaning. It’s horrific, even her medical team seem frightened.
Moments later, when she’s eventually recovered, her team play a song to cheer her up (Who I Am by Wyn Starks) and she belts it out – as best she can these days – with air-punching passion for the camera. Playing to her audience.
There are moments of lightness and joy. A walk through of her archive warehouse in Las Vegas featuring both decades of couture costumes and personal family effects see Dion animated, inspired and wistful. “I think we did create our own magic,” she says. But even then, as she’s leaving, she whispers to her assistant in French: “It’s becoming painful to walk.”
As she must, Dion ends the documentary with hope. “If I can’t run I’ll walk, if I can’t walk I’ll crawl but I won’t stop.” You can’t help but root for her.
