'Diving Bell' portrays life of paraplegic in hauntingly beautiful story
By Nick Knittel, Contributor
February 22, 2008 | 10 a.m.
Madly emotional, darkly comic and -- gasp -- heartwarming, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is an experience of a film: a portrait of human imagination and splendor amid the confines of the human brain.
The film begins inside the head of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) as he wakes up from a three-week coma. He does not know where he is or what has happened at this point until the doctors inform him that he has had a massive stroke and is now paralyzed from head to toe.
Things get worse for Jean-Do as he experiences a rare condition called “locked-in” syndrome, in which the mind is alive and active but without any way to move or communicate.
This is a pretty terrifying scenario, especially to any cleisiophobiacs out there. Jean-Do, however, points out in one of many revelatory inspirational moments, “Two things aren’t paralyzed: my imagination and my memory.”
Jean-Do's imagination and memory are both used frequently in the film through flashbacks and dream images that provide background to Jean-Do’s life before the stroke, as well as the imaginative wanderings that occupy most of his time.
Eerie shots of the diving bell -- the old, immobile steel suits that ocean explorers formerly wore while underwater -- lend an unsettling reality to Jean-Do’s situation and lurk in the background of his dreamed sexual trysts and adventures.
Now the word “inspirational” should not be striking fear into anyone’s heart. This is not a melodramatic story about some paraplegic struggling to make lemonade out of the worst situation imaginable, nor does “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” lunge for the heartstrings in an overly manipulative fashion like many other biopics.
Jean-Do is not exactly a saint. In the life before the stroke, he was the editor of the French fashion magazine Elle, had a wife and three kids with a mistress on the side, and is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a playboy. Despite not being able to do, well, anything, he still manages to hit on all his nurses.
The key to Jean-Do’s communication is in his left eyelid, the only part of his body not affected by the paralysis. With it, he and his speech therapist, Henriette (the gorgeous Marie-Josée Croze), devise an alphabet system that allows Jean-Do to “talk” to those around him. This blinking method eventually leads to the creation of a book (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) from which the film would later be adapted.
Equally fantastic is Jean-Do himself, whose dark sense of humor helps propel the film forward, giving it warmth as well as beauty with his many poetic narrations and observations. Jean-Do is not one to give in to self-pity or anger, and it’s interesting to see that he still maintains the same personality before and after the stroke, only letting it manifest in the few ways available to his body.
Director Julian Schnabel and genius cinematographer Janusz Kaminski have been nominated for Academy Awards for their work on bringing Jean-Do’s story to life. Rapid cuts, closeups and changes in focus are used to get under Jean-Do’s skin and into his mind, where much of the film takes place.
Much of the opening action is viewed as if the audience were looking out through Jean-Do’s eyes, which adds an uncomfortable layer to the experience as viewers, more or less, experience his condition. The film runs close to 45 minutes before the camera is lifted out of Jean-Do’s body, and the audience is given an outside look of his surroundings and appearance.
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a beautifully imagined film that manages to successfully avoid the usual contrivances and clichés of the biopic genre, while also adding something new and unique. It is a film that deserves the praise it has received and should not be missed.
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"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Speakeasy Rating: A+
Runtime: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for nudity, sexual content and some language
Genre: Drama