The Céline Dion Doc Is a Harrowing, Upsetting Watch

This Week

Crying with Céline Dion.

The trauma we’re all still dealing with.

They made a good version of Cats. (?!)

Major Golden Girls news.

The only sequel I care about.

You Have to Watch the Céline Doc

I never thought I’d cry about an apple tree. But I did when that apple tree was a metaphor for Céline Dion.

In the new documentary I Am: Celine Dion, premiering June 25 on Prime Video, Dion talks at length about her experience battling a rare neurological disorder that has prevented her from performing these last three years—keeping the singer from her fans and thus forcing her to question her worth. There’s one monologue in particular that reveals how her absence from the stage because of her painful symptoms has splintered into a guilt—even a shame—over not living up to what it means to be “Céline Dion.”

“I feel like—let’s say there’s an apple tree—I’m an apple tree," she says. “And people are in line and I give them apples. The best. And I shine them, and they all leave with a basket of apples.”

She then inserts her current condition into the metaphor: “And my branches are starting to fall sometimes, get crooked, and those branches are starting to produce a little less apples. But there’s still as many people in line. I don’t want them to wait in line if I don’t have apples for them.”

Her voice catches as she prepares to deliver the next part. She goes silent as her eyes well with tears, as she relays what a fan told her, something that changed her attitude about surviving her disease, performing, and her relationship with all those who adore her. “We’re not here for the apples,” the fan said. “We’re here for the tree.”

Documentaries about musicians are a dime a dozen, and typically pointless—verging on reliably terrible. They’re truly the rotten apples underneath the tree: self-aggrandizing, masturbatory, and perfunctory, often starved of new revelations, even. I Am: Celine Dion is in an entirely different category from those wastes of time.

I’m one of the few journalists who got to see the documentary in advance of its streaming debut next week, at an emotional, yet joyful and celebratory premiere in New York. Dion herself appeared, delivering a 10-minute introduction to the film, during which she cried, I cried, everyone around me cried—and we all clapped and cheered at the star’s triumph. “Thanks to you, my friends. Your presence in my journey has been a gift beyond measure,” she said. “Your never-ending love and support over all these years have delivered me to this moment.”

The film reveals what it took to get to that moment.

I Am: Celine Dion is intimate, almost jarringly so. The film, directed by Irene Taylor, follows Dion around her home, into her bedroom, into her kids’ bedrooms, to doctor appointments, to physical therapy sessions, and to recording studios where she attempts to find the voice she’s lost. These excursions are interjected with confessionals from Dion, who is the only “talking head” who features in the film. They’re done in extreme close-up, often with Dion wearing no makeup, her hair frizzing from a top bun, and unbothered as tears stream down her cheek. (Norma Desmond would never.)

She’s grieving. She admits the dark truths about fighting a disease and it tearing from the spotlight—like a vaudeville hook, would there be anything remotely humorous about Dion’s health situation. Of course, if you’ve ever seen a Céline Dion concert or watched any of her interviews, you know how endearingly kooky she is. Her goofy, hilarious storytelling permeates the film’s—and her—tragedy and trauma.

Dion announced that she was diagnosed with Stiff person syndrome in December 2022. The rare autoimmune neurological disorder causes painful muscle stiffness and crippling spasms, which have been so intense that they broke Dion’s ribs and have made it so that, at times, she was unable to walk. It also, as she demonstrates in the film, constricts her throat and vocal cords, which in essence made it so she could no longer sing her iconic, vocally virtuoso ballads.

However harrowing that is to read, the horrific nature of the debilitating disease is brought to stunning clarity by hearing Dion discuss in great detail how it’s affected her body and, as such, her career. But nothing can prepare you for a sequence in which Dion goes into a full-body spasm, unable to move any part of her body except for two agonizingly contorted fingers. She looks as if she’s in rigor mortis, unable to speak or blink as her therapists tend to her.

It’s all the more devastating to witness because of what caused the episode: singing.

I Am: Celine Dion is remarkable as it isn’t self-pitying or defeatist—nor is Dion. It is hopeful. Dion sings throughout the film, little trills here and there, like reflexes. Sometimes she’s demonstrating how SPS constricts her voice. Sometimes she’s recounting a favorite song, and does a quiet, lilting version of her former belt. Still, the music in Dion’s life remains vivacious, counteracting the depression behind losing her voice.

Prior to her spasm, she returned to the recording studio. She’s hard on herself, asking for take after take when she’s unable to hit the notes and runs the way she wants to. But she finds a groove, even if it’s a softer tone than what we’re used to, almost like that of Billie Eilish. It sounds gorgeous. She’s ecstatic.

One of the triggers of a SPS episode is being overstimulated. Her joy over being able to sing again is what sent her into so much pain later that evening.

But what’s telling about Céline Dion is that, even after the distress of that health crisis, she immediately starts singing again.

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Death Is a Cabaret

Some of us were just taking a bite of our General Tso’s chicken during a commercial break at the Tony Awards when a jumpscare nearly killed us.

It was Gollum doing his recital at his kindergarten graduation. My sleep paralysis demon arrived to show me he’s learned a TikTok dance. Dobby had been resurrected and forced to wear a party hat in his new life as a cocktail waiter.

In actuality, it was Eddie Redmayne, awkwardly contorting his arms as he delivered, in a labored German accent, the opening lines to the number “Willkommen” from his Cabaret revival during the telecast.

The nine-time nominated revival was the rare (someone very online can fact check this: only?) musical performance to welcome back viewers from the commercial break with no introduction. It was just a flash to Eddie Redmayne bent over with a clown party hat and elbow-length rubber gloves, like you’d just woken from anesthesia after painful surgery and your mind was still processing the doctor that was standing over you.

The entire week afterward, the internet erupted in discourse over the Cabaret number. I’m not kidding. People are still debating it. From that jarring beginning to its boisterous end, the performance had everyone from theater neophytes to dramaturges asking…what in the world??? Equally vocal were the defenders. This is a show that had nine Tony noms, and for which tickets cost roughly whatever is left on your AmEx, your grandmother’s engagement ring as collateral, and a verbal promise to sacrifice your first born—just for one ticket. The show’s a hit!

The revival itself got mixed reviews in the U.S., following absolute raves for its London production. Yet all it took was a few minutes of Eddie Redmayne in a party hat for it to become the biggest water cooler sensation of the summer so far. People debating it—good; bad; you missed the point; the context of the show; Nazis—have dominated my social presence all week. Was the performance good? You decide:

Jellicle Cats Slay

Cats is, unequivocally, the worst thing I’ve seen in my entire life. Apply that to the Broadway production of the musical and the star-studded movie.

But here’s to having an open mind, because the production that just premiered in New York City may actually be the most thrilling, creative, and, I can’t believe I’m saying this adjacent to anything Cats-related, profound pieces of theater I’ve seen in a while.

Currently playing at the Perelman Arts Center in downtown Manhattan, Cats: The Jellicle Ball interpolates the characters as performers at a Paris Is Burning-style ballroom competition. Instead of sashaying across the stage, they’re vogueing down the runway. The choreography is ferocious. The costuming is to die for. The energy of the crowd is almost too enthusiastic. As my colleague Tim Teeman, who wrote a brilliant review of the show, put it, “Any Cats hater will be instantly cured by Cats: The Jellicle Ball.”

Here’s a preview:

It’s been a wild week for New York theater. There was a mounting of Titanic at City Center; the Tony Awards; the opening of Cats: The Jellicle Ball; and, lastly, a star-studded, one-night only concert performance of Follies at Carnegie Hall featuring just about every musical theater star you could imagine. (Jennifer Holliday’s elastic jaw was made to slay the vowels of “HoooOOooover” in “I’m Still Here,” which got the night’s biggest ovation.)

Ostensibly, the NYC Pride Parade is next week. Or was it actually the march from the Cats press preview to the Follies concert?

Thank You for Being a Friend

They’re making a gay Golden Girls! (I mean, let’s also lol at the thought that Golden Girls wasn’t already gay.)

Ryan Murphy and Will & Grace co-creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan are behind the project. Usually announcements like this are taken with a grain of salt. Or, I guess, a crumb of cheesecake crust. But there’s a creative team involved and a reported cast, down to who each role would be. This seems like it’s happening.

Notting Hill 2?

Someone showed me this observation that Nicholas Galitzine, the star of The Idea of You, Red, White & Royal Blue and Mary & George, looks exactly like he could be the son of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. I can’t stop thinking about it.

It’s uncanny. Roberts and Grant played characters who fell in love in Notting Hill, and now that there’s perfect casting for their son…a sequel?

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The Exorcism: Turns out that Russell Crowe wasn’t already possessed by a demon. (Now in theaters)

Trigger Warning: Love a title that tells you not to watch the movie. (Now on Netflix)

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