Crippled, crying and convulsing in agony, Celine Dion’s illness is unwatchably cruel. But says KENNEDY, hidden in this new documentary is a message so devastating once you realize it you’ll howl in misery too

Celine Dion exposes her demons in a new documentary that is almost impossible to watch.

In ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ we see the icon diminished, hidden in the splendor of Las Vegas, crippled by pain, supported by boats full of Valium, literally clutching, crying – screaming – for the camera.

Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS), her one-in-a-million rare autoimmune disease, has paralyzed her voice and stolen her ability to sing.

The muscles in her chest, she explains, press against her lungs and strangle her superhuman singing machine.

“I don’t want fans to hear that,” she shouts, rasping a few bars. She doesn’t want to be seen that way, but she feels she should.

“The lying is too hard,” she says, revealing how she has been secretly fighting SPS for almost two decades, making excuses and ruses for canceled shows (a sinus infection, a hearing problem) or pointing the microphone at the audience when she can’t. take out the words and take dozens of pills a day.

“I could have died,” she admits.

After scrapping her planned 2021 Sin City residency, she feels like she owes paying fans an explanation — Adele, take note! – and promises a return to the stage: ‘If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll run…I won’t stop.”

The problem: It’s hard to know whether her sheer willpower, her boundless courage, will be enough. And who is Celine Dion without her voice?

We see her life and career packed away in a warehouse, clinical, almost funeral: shoes and costumes, dresses and her children’s old toys – never to be worn or played with again.

Between IVs and plasma infusions, she struggles to give her sons a normal life. The two youngest, only 13 years old, probably cannot remember their father well.

René died in 2016 and it is clear that Celine never recovered. How much suffering can a woman endure?

After a two-year hiatus from singing, she forces herself through a painful recording session, obsessing in a way that only a true star can.

Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS), her one-in-a-million rare autoimmune disease, has paralyzed her voice and stolen her ability to sing.

She hates what she hears on the playback and pushes her body to the breaking point – the miserable penance that follows is enough to turn you away.

Her therapist is the first to notice the subsiding spasms in her foot. Relax, he says, as her ankle sits at a 90-degree angle.

But her hands twist like claws and soon she lies stiff on her stomach, her back is unnaturally arched and she can no longer lift her neck.

Then comes the frothing, full-fledged attack. Medical staff rush in, but the prying cameras remain.

Diva down.

Ten long minutes of torturous convulsions and childish cries, tears staining her makeup-free face. How could we see such intimate torment?

I wanted to jump through the screen and help, to avert the prying lens and save her last shred of dignity.

But by admitting her shyness, by exposing her loss of control, she takes control – and gives us the most honest story of her life, her legacy, this brutal final chapter that she can muster.

Her hands writhe like claws and soon she is lying stiffly on her stomach, her back arched unnaturally, unable to lift her neck. Then comes the foaming, full-on assault.

Ten long minutes of torturous convulsions and childish cries, tears staining her makeup-free face. How could we see such intimate torment?

Instead of a voice, this may be all she has left to offer to legions of admirers desperate for another performance.

No one is ready for this to be the last goodbye – and certainly not Celine herself.

We witness a woman alive with hope and a fierce desire to channel her remaining talent and energy into recovery. We pray with her for some vague intervention – medicinal or miraculous – to pull her back from the brink of the abyss.

But worse than any onscreen trauma is the lasting realization that this grand tour of Celine’s life and pain is now being told for her to tell, a living eulogy for a star that refuses to be dimmed.