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Inside the Making of the Celine Dion Documentary

The film’s director says that despite Dion’s battle with stiff-person syndrome, she lives with joy


spinner image Celine Dion with her arms raised in the air in a scene from the Prime Video documentary I Am Celine Dion
Amazon MGM Studios

After a three-decade-plus run in the pop spotlight, topping global music charts and shattering attendance records, Celine Dion certainly had it all, on the most epic scale imaginable. Until one day, she didn’t.

Whether or not you’ve been an admirer of the powerhouse French-Canadian vocalist, Amazon Prime’s often achingly intimate and bracingly intense documentary I Am: Celine Dion delivers a portrait of the icon that can’t help but inspire both empathy and respect. The film chronicles Dion’s ongoing battle with stiff-person syndrome, which has drastically impacted her ability to perform.

“There are a lot of relatable moments with Celine even though you may have very little in common with her,” the film’s director Irene Taylor tells AARP, noting that despite all the singer’s soaring accomplishments and the lavish luxuries they reaped, the great common leveler of a debilitating health struggle brings her down to earth in the most human of ways.

Bucking documentary convention, there are no talking-head sequences featuring friends, colleagues or experts offering their own insights. Much like the performances of her heyday, Dion holds the spotlight from start to finish. It’s Celine’s show, full stop.

Taylor says that Dion herself proposed the notion of telling her own story, unfettered by outside perspectives. “She had asked me if a film like that is possible, and I assured her ‘It’s absolutely possible, but that means you have to work a little harder because you have to be available more.’ She agreed. And there is a will in her way.”

“She let me know from day one of filming that she was going to be very open,” adds Taylor. “She was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and she was ready to talk about that and come to terms with how she might move forward.”

The film illustrates both the highs and lows of Dion’s life, liberally juxtaposing numerous archival clips from throughout her life including images of her beloved manager-husband René Angélil, who died in 2016, alongside more recent footage chronicling her current everyday experiences. She appears startlingly deglamorized, devoutly earnest and, refreshingly, far funnier than she’s ever come across before.

There’s her charming at-home rapport with her children; a nostalgic, self-effacing tour of a warehouse overstuffed with everything from her voluminous wardrobe collection to her children’s artwork; her frustrating bid to find new musical expression between her vocally limiting condition and the high standard she sets for herself; and a harrowing, hard-to-watch medical crisis that underscores the extent of her affliction.

“Some days were really very ordinary,” says Taylor. “And when difficult things were happening in front of the camera, even though the human side of me cringed a bit, I thought, ‘This is part of the deal.’ I didn’t want to make something that made people cry the whole time. At the end of the day, what she’s enduring right now, it is a sad situation, but she has so much joy in her life.”

Indeed, that palpable joy — in her family, in her desire to stay connected and forthright with her legions of devoted fans, and especially in her unbridled passion for music that seems to fuel her very existence even amid the obstacles she now faces — comes through in the film. And despite its current limitations, her singing voice still emerges as delightfully beautiful in one breath and hauntingly affecting in the next.

spinner image Celine Dion in the documentary I Am Celine Dion
Amazon MGM Studios

“She still sings every day,” says Taylor. “She sings at home. She sings when she’s responding to a question. She’s always got some funny little ironic song or reference. She’ll take a melody of one song and add the lyrics to another song, and she just smashes them together and comes up with just silliness, or something actually quite profound.”

Silliness, profundity and everything in between is all on display in the documentary, demonstrating that Dion’s voice — and in this case, what she has to say — remains well worth listening to.

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