308 replies to this topic

[LeChauffeur100]

stevo, on 18 June 2024 - 05:11 PM, said:

The Love Again recording session was horrendous to watch.

Why exactly?

[ewh12]

Wyn Starks definitely is a fan

https://www.instagra...jBteG5rNDI2d3Bj

Edited by ewh12, 18 June 2024 - 08:00 PM.

[LeChauffeur100]

Was it too shocking for you who have watched it? I am genuinely scared of this docu and I feel like I need some kind of warning of potential emotionally heavy/disturbing scenes given what we’ve been told so far about filmed crisis she’s had.

[ewh12]

Tomier88, on 18 June 2024 - 03:11 PM, said:

It's been a long time since I've posted but I saw the screening and was wondering if anyone else who saw it had similar questions to me. First off, the film itself was incredible, emotional and so well made. So much love was put into this. It also really opened my eyes to how much she was going through physically and emotionally (and for so long too!). It also felt so relatable to me personally, some of the things she went through, as I also have a very rare condition called polycythemia vera and have very serious episodes (Crisis) as they call it. I started getting sick at 18 and waiting over 10 years to find out why I was so sick all the time was so very hard. The idea/scary feeling of not knowing let alone it taking away essentially one of the biggest parts of who she was (her voice), was incredibly moving. It really gives me so much more love and appreciation for who she is as a person and everything she has accomplished. It also showed all the pressure she puts on herself (and others incl fans/media etc.) to be "Celine Dion" esp when she can't always be that for everyone all the time.... all of this gave me a really deep and wonderful appreciation and respect for her as a fan, and as a human.

  Anyway, all that being said, In the beginning of the film they show/lead up to her being taking away or prepared to be taken away by an ambulance or emt right? in what looked like her home or something, but the scary emotional moment at the end was in a room off from the studio and she did not end up leaving or going to the hospital based on that scene, she came out of it. And so, in the end that initial 911 incident was never actually shown at all. Did anyone else spot this? This tells me that there was more than one scary incident potentially filmed than what they presented in the film, but it was also odd they that they "teased" one and showed another, never coming back to the original because it was even presented with a text shown "12 months earlier" right after showing/teasing the first scene, implying we'd see what happened that time later in the film. I feel like there might be much more to everything than we saw, but they decided just on one to demonstrate the seriousness of the "crisis" she deals with. I just am confused why they didn't just "Tease" the one they showed? Maybe they weren't able to show as much as she was being cared for by the EMT/DRs etc. Just feel that was an odd thing i noticed.

Yes, I was a bit confused in retrospect since I was thinking they were going to build to that scene, but then we get that recording studio scene. But your theory might be correct, unfortunately

[ewh12]

LeChauffeur100, on 18 June 2024 - 07:59 PM, said:

Was it too shocking for you who have watched it? I am genuinely scared of this docu and I feel like I need some kind of warning of potential emotionally heavy/disturbing scenes given what we’ve been told so far about filmed crisis she’s had.

It’s not totally a grim film. It’s very joyeous and real. More like a day to day of her life, while highlighting the bigger moments as well. The heavy parts though, you can’t avoid and while it can be triggering, it’s not in an over dramatized way. It feels real and how each of us might feel dealing with serious things in our life. There can be moments of happiness but then the hard things can appear just as naturally and unexpectedly

[anewdayhascome]

So I watched it today again and still I am confused about the timeline. At some point she says she couldn't walk "last year" but you can really tell which year she refers to, or which November (that the therapist mentions another time). Also, if I am not mistaken during the crisis she is given valium? (or was it a different scene?) So she stopped taking valium during the pandemic > got worse > got diagnosed with SPS or she continued taking valium post diagnosis?

Like the documentary is very well done but the timing is so off at times. Like in the first half she records dubbing for Love Again but the recording of the song comes back at the very end... Some clarity about the dates would be even more important for the general public that might think it's been like this not a long time ago etc...

[Ukrfan]

anewdayhascome, on 18 June 2024 - 09:02 PM, said:

So I watched it today again and still I am confused about the timeline. At some point she says she couldn't walk "last year" but you can really tell which year she refers to, or which November (that the therapist mentions another time). Also, if I am not mistaken during the crisis she is given valium? (or was it a different scene?) So she stopped taking valium during the pandemic > got worse > got diagnosed with SPS or she continued taking valium post diagnosis?

Like the documentary is very well done but the timing is so off at times. Like in the first half she records dubbing for Love Again but the recording of the song comes back at the very end... Some clarity about the dates would be even more important for the general public that might think it's been like this not a long time ago etc...

It can only refer to November 2022 I believe. Nov 2023 is too late (and they stopped filming in Dec IIRC), and Nov 2021 is too early (they didn’t start filming yet and Celine hadn’t been diagnosed).

[anewdayhascome]

It could have been 2021 if they started shooting in 2022, he says first three months ago, and then November... which would be even earlier. Especially that if it was so bad in November 2022, it would mean we only watch 2023 as we don't really see in the film a worse condition, Celine not walking etc. Also remember, that they can speak about periods from the past (3 months ago, last November, last year) that have not been part of the film. This is why the chronology in the film is not clear. Even though you get the initial one year earlier, you don't get the information of when "now" is

[Ukrfan]

anewdayhascome, on 18 June 2024 - 10:05 PM, said:

It could have been 2021 if they started shooting in 2022, he says first three months ago, and then November... which would be even earlier. Especially that if it was so bad in November 2022, it would mean we only watch 2023 as we don't really see in the film a worse condition, Celine not walking etc. Also remember, that they can speak about periods from the past (3 months ago, last November, last year) that have not been part of the film. This is why the chronology in the film is not clear. Even though you get the initial one year earlier, you don't get the information of when "now" is

Hmmm I kinda assumed she started working with her PT after getting a diagnosis. It’d be weird to do that without knowing what’s going on as in some conditions , it might have made things worse instead of better.

But I agree, it’s a pity no dates are shown in the documentary.

[stevo]

LeChauffeur100, on 18 June 2024 - 07:57 PM, said:

Why exactly?

It was just so difficult for her. And you could see the real frustration and sadness in her,  attempt after attempt

[ScotieG]

The documentary is a very hard watch, particularly the last half an hour.

Some people asked about the clip of TPOL; I think it’s the 2019 Vegas show that was recorded and aside from the first verse it is the regular playback.

[scielle]

Anyone have subscriptions to The Telegraph or The Times?
Telegraph: https://www.telegrap...on-prime-video/
The Times: https://www.thetimes...roism-rbjjdjmtf

[ewh12]

A lot of positive reviews from the people who’ve seen it!

https://boxd.it/xbRg

[Shamrock_1982]

At the gym and have “Who I Am” on repeat… love it!

[Nmj]

Shamrock_1982, on 19 June 2024 - 06:32 AM, said:

At the gym and have “Who I Am” on repeat… love it!

Can you post this song?

[ewh12]

Shamrock_1982, on 19 June 2024 - 06:32 AM, said:

At the gym and have “Who I Am” on repeat… love it!

That was me all last night and me when I go to the gym this morning!

[ewh12]

Nmj, on 19 June 2024 - 06:33 AM, said:

Can you post this song?

https://youtu.be/g8S...YayKKueQ4D05-bg

[tshlw]

Review from The Telegraph

I Am: Celine Dion – A cross between Spinal Tap, Sunset Boulevard and a harrowing medical documentary

Charting her battle with stiff person syndrome, this powerful, vulnerable film shows a side to the superstar we have never seen before
Neil McCormick,
CHIEF MUSIC CRITIC
19 June 2024 • 12:50pm
Related Topics

Celine Dion in the new documentary CREDIT: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios

There has never been a music documentary like I Am: Celine Dion, a weirdly compelling yet discombobulating cross between Spinal Tap, Sunset Boulevard and a harrowing medical journey. A day after watching it, I’m still not sure how I actually feel about it.

It is routine for showbusiness documentaries to proclaim that we have never seen their star like this before. In this case, it is actually true. Indeed, I don’t think a major star has ever allowed themselves to be filmed in such exposed and vulnerable situations. We see the Canadian superstar in the full throes of a medical emergency, her body going into rictus, hands twisted, limbs frozen, teeth bared, tears streaming from her eyes as she groans in audible pain.

In 2021, the 54-year-old was diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder only found in one in a million, that attacks the muscular system causing spasms, rigidity, breathing problems, and chronic pain. Crucially for one of the most celebrated and technically gifted singers of our times, it affects her voice, which has become prone to spasming, shifting 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 many frank and emotional interviews, speaking slowly, deliberately. “Music … I miss it a lot.”

That is an understatement. The heaviness of her loss permeates the film. Without her extraordinary vocal ability, Dion is seen in the midst of a full-blown existential crisis, struggling to work out who she is if not a singer. Stripped of makeup, hair tied back in a simple bob, granny glasses perched on her nose, looking much older than the glamorous image usually presented to the public, the star wobbles precariously between despair, denial and defiance that this version of her life and self is over.

Filmed over a year in late 2021 and 2022 during the waning period of the Covid pandemic, the star seems adrift and isolated in a sterile, luxurious mansion in the bleak Nevada desert, attended by masked and silent staff. The only other people we really meet are her two pampered and innocuously pleasant twin sons, Eddy and Nelson (then both 11), who are either clamped into VR headsets or strapped into immersive video-gaming chairs.

Dion is invariably charming, often goofily funny, yet the directorial decision to make her’s almost the only voice we hear creates an atmosphere of self-obsession. She marvels over her cupboards with hundreds of designer shoes. “When a girl loves her shoes, she makes them fit!” Dion declares, in an amusing monologue about fashion fetishism as she tours a 12,000 square foot warehouse where she keeps all her couture costumes, displayed so that she can take a trawl down memory lane in a perfectly maintained museum to herself. “I will sound selfish, but it’s all about me,” she admits, only half joking, during a brief and ultimately traumatic visit to a studio to try and record a new song.

Oscar-nominated producer and director Irene Taylor had already begun pre-production on a Dion documentary when the diagnosis was revealed, and so what was meant to be a flattering narrative based around her long running Las Vegas residency turned into something far more raw and emotional than anyone might have expected, including the participants. “The lie is too heavy now,” Dion confesses, as she reveals the extent of her medical issues and the ways in which they had been covered up over the years.
It is a film filled with tragedy, pathos and unintended comedy, artfully made yet uncertain of its own trajectory. Copious archive footage is beautifully assembled but deaf to tonal disjuncts, cutting from scenes of her late husband’s funeral to Dion melodramatically singing All By Myself on stage in Vegas.  

In the wake of her medical emergency, Dion defiantly and even joyously sings along to her own recording of Who I Am, but such a bravura ending is misleading. Every human being faces a waning of their powers as age and mortality take their toll. Dion is experiencing an accelerated health crisis, albeit slightly softened by the privileges of her wealth and fame. It is astonishing that cameras were on hand to capture this in such close detail, and perhaps even more astonishing that such a public figure decided to allow filming to continue. Yet there is little sense of resolution, possibly because the cameras stopped rolling after a year while Dion remains on a journey through the stages of grief, and hasn’t arrived at acceptance yet. “I still see myself dancing and singing,” she insists. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl. But I won’t stop. I won’t stop.”

[tshlw]

The Times Review

I Am: Celine Dion review — unflinching portrait of singer’s despair and heroism

Documentary charts the highs and lows of a star whose career has been cut short by a rare condition
Kevin Maher
Tuesday June 18 2024, 5.00pm BST, The Times

Celine Dion’s struggle to cope with the effects of stiff-person syndrome are laid bare in Irene Taylor’s documentary

Celine Dion has redefined “unvarnished” with this profoundly moving biographical documentary that frames the 56-year-old singer in unsparing close-ups and climaxes with her twisted torso captured, prone, in the midst of a prolonged seizure. Dion suffers from the rare neurological disorder stiff-person syndrome (SPS), which is characterised by muscular spasms, rigidity, chronic pain and, worst of all for a power balladeer, vocal impairment.

“When your voice brings you joy, you’re the best of yourself,” she muses sadly from the palatial Vegas home where she lives with her twin teenage boys, attentive staff and, it seems, low-level despair.

Dion’s life story unfolds here like an inverted fairytale, where a singing-obsessed child from small-town Canada reaches the global heights (over $1 billion in concert revenue) only to be struck down by a curse from within. “I think I was very good,” she says, modestly, reflecting back on the star she was while honest tears stream down her cheeks and the camera of the director, Irene Taylor, shakes slightly, urgently, around her subject.

The Oscar-nominated Taylor was an ingenious directorial choice, and she has previously made non-fiction films about illness, blindness and child abuse. She tackles this material without any of the branded insincerity normally found in music docs (see, for instance, Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé), and certainly none of the biographical coyness. We see all aspects here, from the intimate maternity ward footage where Dion’s first son, René-Charles, is delivered, to sequences of grief over the coffin of her husband and manager, René Angélil.

And yes Taylor flashes back to Dion in her prime, roaring through the roof-raisers — her version of Jennifer Rush’s The Power of Love is Richter-level huge. But these scenes are always deployed, deftly, in counterpoint to Dion today, who grapples with physical infirmity and confesses that her SPS began 17 years ago and has necessitated years of denial and drug treatment.

There are eerie echoes of last year’s standout documentary Still: A Michael J Fox Movie in these moments, especially when Dion reveals the tricks she used to disguise failing vocal prowess during concerts — she turned the mic to the crowd or tapped it repeatedly to obscure the sound.

The final section is the toughest, and includes the aforementioned fit. But it also features Dion rasping along wildly to Who I Am by Wyn Starks, with its defiant refrain, “I gotta be who I know I am inside”. And who she is, from all available evidence, is heroic.

[scielle]

Thank you for posting these two!

[Ukrfan]

Quote

Filmed over a year in late 2021 and 2022 during the waning period of the Covid pandemic

Okay, I'm totally confused now. I thought they stopped filming in late 2023.

[scielle]

Ukrfan, on 19 June 2024 - 08:19 AM, said:

Okay, I'm totally confused now. I thought they stopped filming in late 2023.

Possibly it’s just the post production that ended in late 2023. I’m sure Irene had hundreds of hours of footage to edit (along with hundreds of hours of archival content to wade through).

[scielle]

Various discussions/ reviews on Quebec radio:

Maladies chroniques: «On abandonne [les patients]»
https://www.fm1077.c...obox=1718753225

«On la présentait comme une championne, là on la voit mettre un genou par terre»
https://www.fm1069.c...obox=1718779963

Josélito Michaud est encore sous le choc
https://www.985fm.ca...obox=1718771660

Edited by scielle, 19 June 2024 - 09:25 AM.

[ScotieG]

scielle, on 19 June 2024 - 09:04 AM, said:

Possibly it’s just the post production that ended in late 2023. I’m sure Irene had hundreds of hours of footage to edit (along with hundreds of hours of archival content to wade through).

One of the only things I was disappointed about was the choice of archival footage; it’s mainly because I’ve seen pretty much everything like most people here have. I was desperately hoping for something from 2015 or more from earlier tours. Proper nitpicky, but I think I felt disappointed that I’d seen most of it.

[scielle]

Ukrfan, on 19 June 2024 - 08:19 AM, said:

Okay, I'm totally confused now. I thought they stopped filming in late 2023.

Also, if production actually did end in late 2022 (with post running through late 2023), that's 1.5 years of rehabilitation since. Hopefully she made good progress since, found the combination of treatments that works reliably and predictably.
Coming out of that doc... it didn't look like a woman who can go back on stage. But the woman I saw on Mon night, I absolutely believe she could.

[scielle]

ScotieG, on 19 June 2024 - 09:40 AM, said:

One of the only things I was disappointed about was the choice of archival footage; it's mainly because I've seen pretty much everything like most people here have. I was desperately hoping for something from 2015 or more from earlier tours. Proper nitpicky, but I think I felt disappointed that I'd seen most of it.

Yeah, I hear that.
But it was all new to Irene, and I think she thoughtfully chose things that would be most impactful to a general audience, not just Celine fans.
I personally wish a bit of that first video of "Ce n'etait q'un reve" had made the cut. And maybe some videos of her learning English (we know they exist). For the general public that is, not for die hard fans.

[scielle]

Radio Times: https://www.radiotim...e-video-review/

The entire thing is glowing, but here's just an excerpt -

"From start to finish, the documentary shows someone at their most vulnerable. It is unsanitised, gritty and real – qualities that are not always easily found in other celebrity-led documentaries.
Taken as a whole, it is a must-watch. It's not just for the many millions of fans of Celine's music, but for anyone who wants a true-to-life portrayal of the daily, if not hourly, ups and downs of someone living with a debilitating condition.
When juxtaposed with Celine's authentic kindness and determination to fight, it makes for a moving, through-provoking, and oddly uplifting watch. It's not one to be missed."

Edited by scielle, 19 June 2024 - 10:36 AM.

[RosieBarron]

scielle, on 19 June 2024 - 09:42 AM, said:

Also, if production actually did end in late 2022 (with post running through late 2023), that's 1.5 years of rehabilitation since. Hopefully she made good progress since, found the combination of treatments that works reliably and predictably.
Coming out of that doc... it didn't look like a woman who can go back on stage. But the woman I saw on Mon night, I absolutely believe she could.

I saw it last night. As you say where she is now appears to be a much better place than she was in when the film ended. My first comment when it ended was that there needs to be a part 2, as the story really isn't finished. Some scenes were hard to watch but it was fascinating, could have watched hours more of the footage.

[ewh12]

ScotieG, on 19 June 2024 - 09:40 AM, said:

One of the only things I was disappointed about was the choice of archival footage; it's mainly because I've seen pretty much everything like most people here have. I was desperately hoping for something from 2015 or more from earlier tours. Proper nitpicky, but I think I felt disappointed that I'd seen most of it.

Yeah that was my only criticism. As I mentioned in the other thread, the chosen archival footage, if not familiar, just also felt too slick as compared to the subtle tones of the documentary. I thought some of the lesser known footage was nice, like, the Chattanooga Choo Choo from Incognito Special, the Carmen clips, the first performance of L'Olympia. Even it's familiar to us, those were nice to see on screen.

Interestingly, if they had added a few more minutes to the film, I would have loved to see the transition from Girl to Woman on screen in some way, Ala the Melanie/Incognito years. I thought that's an important part that was missing from the story as that was a pivotal moment in learning who Céline is and who she became as a person today. No time to grow up because "The Show Must Go On"

[tshlw]

I understand why she needed to do this documentary and the strength and courage it took. She truly is an inspiration. Can't imagine how many people she will help with her struggle and that the world can see what we already knew how remarkable she is. I just know this is not something I will want to watch again. Seeing anyone in pain is very hard for me, I don't even watch movies with sad endings anymore if I can help it. Having it be Celine in pain makes it even worse makes my soul hurt.

So I hope some day maybe in next 10 years we get a series not even a movie of her celebrating all she has accomplished, that rags to riches journey. Nothing cheesy but now that she appears back to being able to perform we see her reminisce on her life and accomplishments. Celebrating all she and Rene accomplished together, something more than him being reduced to a few clips and a painful memory, and what she has done after he passed. Really getting to see footage never seen before and how her journey living with SPS has been as well.