When a filmmaker makes a film, he needs an “angle” and it is that of lies that Irene Taylor Brodsky found for I am: Celine Dion.
The renowned documentary filmmaker (3 Emmy trophies and an Oscar nomination) could not have a better subject than our Céline for her feature-length documentary which will be launched on the Prime Video platform on June 25, and in several cinemas from Friday the 21st.
The film presents a morose, dark Céline without any makeup. A Céline who whips herself mercilessly for having “lied” for years about her state of health. Stiff person syndrome (SPR) increasingly affected her voice and even caused spasms that reduced her to momentary silence or temporary immobility.
Was it lying?
Sunday evening on TVA, in the interview she gave to Jean-Philippe Dion, it was this lie that the famous singer mainly spoke about, constantly returning to the subject. Jean-Philippe, the most benevolent and obliging of all our presenters, forgot the questions he had prepared. Discreet and respectful, moved at times, he let Céline express herself on the sorrow she felt at having deceived the public by hiding her condition from them and on the remorse she felt at having tried to hide it from herself. even the truth.
Was it a lie to say that she canceled her shows for health reasons, when she gave herself to her art like no other artist? In April 2006, Céline canceled shows in Las Vegas for viral labyrinthitis, then in 2013 for sinusitis. In 2016 it was for a viral infection, in March 2018 for surgery. What followed was a series of cancellations until that of his major “Courage” tour, first interrupted by the pandemic before finally being canceled for good. This time for this bizarre stiff person disease, a still mysterious illness that only affects one person in a million.
What dramatization!
It took years before the best doctors in the world finally discovered the real reason for Céline’s discomfort. In the circumstances, talking about lies seems to me to be a dramatization that is all the more outrageous given that Celine Dion is a true “open book.”
I don’t doubt for a moment the interest of Irene Brodsky’s film, but I find it paradoxical that the filmmaker made lying such an important theme in her documentary. If anyone has never known how to lie, it’s Celine Dion. It is also her candor and her ingenuity which have earned her so much love from the public and which have allowed her to shine in all the talk shows where she has been invited.
I would rather encourage Céline and especially her filmmaker to meditate on the words of the author Anatole France, Nobel Prize winner in 1921. He wrote that “humanity needs the truth, but it needs much more the lie which consoles it and gives him infinite hopes. Without lies, humanity would perish from despair and boredom!”
