You might think this is a confession, letting you know after all these years, these mediocre stream of consciousness reviews are actually being written by Celine Dion. I mean, they are, but that’s not it. It’s not so much that Celine Dion is my ghost writer, but rather I’ve trained my AI to write reviews in the style of Celine Dion. So, because you loved me enough to read this, I’ll do this all by myself.
Before streaming services, we used to have thoughtful conversations on our documentary subjects. Now, this is almost like content creation, with aspiring documentarians being sent out to produce content. Everyone seems to be getting their own doc, but what is the perspective? For this film, which is now available on Amazon for Prime subscribers, the perspective is voyeuristic and somewhat of a diary.
I wanted this to work, but it just isn’t as successful as something like Still: A Michael J Fox story, which really does show Fox and his Parkinson’s, while also competently telling the trajectory of his career in an interesting way where he can reflect on it. Val, another Amazon doc is also an aspirational choice as Val Kilmer reckons with footage he shot over the course of his life.
This, doesn’t really do much. Celine Dion is a vocal goddess who has had this tremendous diagnoses of stiff person syndrome, and the film serves a little as a look into her new normal, but it is narratively a mess. It is hard to manage if we are past or present, and there’s never really one clear thread that connects the film. Dion obviously felt obligated to do this for the fans, but the format doesn’t help.It needed to be a diary from her, or it needed to give her the opportunity to ruminate on her career and marriage to her now deceased husband, or even just the difficulty she faces being a mother with stiff person syndrome.
This wants to be everything, and ends up being like film paella, just some stuff thrown in, and we’ll see if it works. I felt genuine emotion from her, and I did learn more about her condition, though I feel like we could have gone deeper. She has the opportunity, like Fox, to become an awareness advocate for this syndrome, and bring attention to what life is like for regular people who don’t have millions of dollars. How is this such a devastating diagnoses? I feel like doctors could have helped quantify that.
She easily could have made the perfect documentary, one that works as a love letter, an explanation, an awareness tool, a retrospective, all of it, but it tries too hard to take little pieces, and blend them together in a format that isn’t quite as strong.
The audio description, which is Media Access Group, and i believe narrated by Claudia Dunn, has some moments where you just have to let Celine sing. We do get long performances from her at points in her career, and you can’t mess with that. It is in the little details. For example, one of the little things I liked was how Celine’s dog is described. It’s an older dog, and the way they describe its movement supports that. I can’t remember exactly, but I felt like lumbers was definitely one of the choices. It isn’t a huge thing, but that attention to detail comes out from time to time in other elements. Documentaries that rely on interviews of any kind typically aren’t known for having great audio description, but this one is easier to describe since the director likes to step back and capture moments more often than we have become used to.
Just hearing this woman sing some of her songs was worth my time, and there are a few moments where Celine breaks through with raw emotion that hit home, especially when talking about her late husband. however, I would have chosen someone other than Taylor to comprise this. I know, she’s an award nominated/winning filmmaker, but I don’t think she served this film in the best way.
Final Grade: B
