More power to Celine

Parbina Rashid

Celine Dion made us believe in the ‘Power of Love’ when we were young (Jennifer Rush originally sang the song, but Dion owned it with her 1993 cover). Decades later, she makes us believe in the ‘power of the mind’.

That’s Dion, battling with Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS), but not giving up on her fans. Forced to stay away from the stage for three years, she reconnects with her fans through this documentary, ‘I Am: Celine Dion’, with a promise that she would reclaim her voice and the stage — “If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl. But I won’t stop.”

She certainly is not stopping. She convulses, loses balance, but she gets up, jokes and tries to hit the high notes amid her therapy sessions. She was diagnosed with SPS in 2022, a rare autoimmune neurological disorder that causes painful muscle stiffness and crippling spasms.

Dion had been living with it for 17 years. The change in the voice while singing, stiffness of the neck muscles while performing, which she would try to disguise by pointing the mic towards the audience to let them sing or feign a cough — she kept her condition under wraps.

But then, the lies started weighing down and she decided to make the camera her confession box. Right from the moment she tells her two young sons, Nelson and Eddy, “I travelled the world and didn’t see anything”, she bares it all.

Director Irene Taylor does not make room for talking heads. She taps on the inner power of Celine Dion and peppers it with archival footage from her concerts and home videos to make this almost two-hour-long fare a gripping one. Here, we meet not the star but Dion, the woman, who is not afraid to face the camera without a trace of make-up and shed tears. “It hurts to show you this,” she says into the camera, as she tries to sing a popular song, and her voice fails her.

There are plenty of such moments, like the one when she uses the metaphor of an apple tree to describe herself. She rues that the branches do not have enough apples to cater to the people who are lining up for shiny apples. Her pain is palpable, but her goofiness brings a smile.

The most interesting part is when she gives a guided tour of her warehouse, where she has stored all her couture dresses and shoes. “When a girl loves her shoes, she always makes them fit,” she says, admitting how she had worn shoes a size smaller by making her toes curl.

That’s her. Dion, who calls herself a product of love, affection, attention and music which ran in abundance in her family, says she never ‘invented’ herself on stage or otherwise.

Though we would have liked to know more about her 13 siblings, her childhood in Quebec, her win at the Eurovision 88 singing contest and her married life with René Angélil, Taylor prefers to focus her camera firmly on Dion’s failing health and her determination to get better. She plays on her strength — her complete access to Dion’s life and her house in Las Vegas.

In 2023, the singer returns to the recording studio. Going through take after take, Celine Dion finally hits the right notes. But the price she has to pay for it is unimaginable. The overstimulation at the studio triggers an intense SPS episode later in the evening and she suffers a severe spasm.

As she whimpers in pain, the doctor asks her if he should stop the recording. She tells him not to. She wants her fans to see her at her worst. And that’s what separates ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ from the carefully-curated profiles of personalities in the name of documentaries. We have heard her music, this documentary makes us hear her voice!