The singer as you have never seen her before

There’s never been a music documentary like “I Am: Celine Dion,” a strangely compelling yet confusing mix of “Spinal Tap,” “Sunset Boulevard” and a harrowing medical journey. A day after watching it, I’m still not sure what I actually think of it.

Show business documentaries often claim that we’ve never seen their star like this before. In this case, that’s true. In fact, I don’t think a major star has ever been filmed in such an exposed and vulnerable situation. We see the Canadian superstar in the midst of a medical emergency, her body convulsing, her hands twisted, her limbs frozen, her teeth bared, tears streaming from her eyes as she moans in audible pain.

In 2021, the 54-year-old was diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that affects only one in a million people and attacks the muscles, causing spasms, stiffness, breathing problems and chronic pain. Crucially for one of the most famous and technically gifted singers of our time, it affects her voice, which is prone to spasms and changes in range and timbre, exacerbated by a loss of lung power. “My voice was the conductor of my life,” Dion tells the camera in one of her many candid and emotional interviews, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Music… I miss it very much.”

That’s an understatement. The gravity of her loss permeates the entire film. Stripped of her extraordinary vocal abilities, Dion is seen in the midst of a full-blown existential crisis, trying to figure out who she is if not a singer. Without makeup, with a simple bob in her hair, granny glasses on her nose, and looking much older than the glamorous image usually presented to the public, the star veers dangerously between despair, denial, and defiance that this version of her life and self is over.

The film was shot over a year, in late 2021 and 2022, during the final stages of the Covid pandemic. The star seems disoriented and isolated, living in a sterile, luxurious mansion in the desolate Nevada desert, where he is attended to by masked and taciturn staff. The only other people we really meet are her two spoiled and harmlessly nice twin sons, Eddy and Nelson (both 11 at the time), who are strapped into either VR headsets or immersive video game chairs.