I Am Celine Dion: A Review
I watched “I Am Celine Dion” the other night.
We’re all familiar with Celine. You would have had to have been born yesterday, and I mean, YESTERDAY to not be familiar with her work.
If you turned on any popular radio station from, oh I don’t know, 1990 to the early 2000’s you would have heard her music.
She was everywhere. Nine of her songs reached No.1, none bigger than the song from the movie “Titanic”, “My Heart Will Go On”.
The documentary rightly documents her songs and successful career, but the purpose of the project is to reveal just what she’s been going through over the last few years.
The singer has been diagnosed with “Stiff Person Syndrome”, I know, I’d never heard of it either until this this. Possibly one of the reasons is because it affects approximately 1 in 1 million people. It wasn’t lost on me as I was watching, about the same odds as someone having her talent.
My bias when watching I Am Celine Dion
It’s at this point that I feel I need to say this. Doing what I have done for my career, being a disc jockey means that I have played thousands of songs, hundreds of times, including hers. In doing that, I disembody the artist. I care about the record, when do the vocals begin, how does it end? The documentary opened my eyes to just how good of an entertainer she was on stage. I never questioned the talent, the magnificent voice. I didn’t know that she had the stage presence shown in the documentary. She was wonderful. Much of the documentary is what you would expect the sadness of someone with that much talent and ability being cut down in her prime. And there’s a fair amount of that, and she is a very sympathetic person. You really do feel bad that this is what she’s going through.
But then, near the end of the documentary, and I think purposefully done by the team that created this, you witness her go through one of her episodes. Some what to call it a seizure, her sports medicine expert calls it a spasm. Apparently, when her brain is overstimulated, the spasms can come on. In the documentary it began simply as a spasm in her foot, which then takes over her entire body. To say it was uncomfortable to watch is a huge understatement. I don’t know if you like her music or not, to watch a human being having to go through that is something that will stick with you for a long time. Have you ever had a cramp or a “charlie horse”? Just imagine your entire body cramping up. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. She agreed to continue filming for what reason I’m unsure. I know the exposure will help those suffering from this dreaded disease, but it is, again, 1 in a million.
I do recommend that you watch, if for no other reason than to count your lucky stars, that you don’t suffer from this disease.
I do think differently about her after watching. I have a deeper appreciation for her talent and a deeper appreciation for her as a human being, trying to go to battle each day with this foe.
I Am Celine Dion is available on Amazon Prime
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