The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) – J. Schnabel

A couple of weeks ago I saw a presentation about consciousness that discussed “locked in syndrome” (a terrifying experience in which people are fully paralyzed yet fully conscious); the speaker mentioned this film based on a book dictated by a person with locked in syndrome using only eye blinks.  So, I thought the film was going to be a documentary and that it was bound to be depressing.  To my astonishment, director Julian Schnabel instead used actors to dramatize the book, told primarily with subjective camera shots from the one non-paralysed eye of Jean-Do Bauby, former editor of Elle magazine, played by Mathieu Amalric.  We follow Bauby’s journey and we hear his internal monologue as he realises he is paralyzed and as he slowly comes to terms with his plight.  We marvel at the team of health professionals who find a way to communicate with him and his drive to document his experience in a book.  The relationships with his ex-girlfriend (Emmanuelle Seigner), mother of his three children, and his current girlfriend, who is afraid to visit, as well as his 92-year-old father (Max von Sydow) and other friends are now filled with heightened emotions.  Schnabel keeps things impressionistic and humanistic, showing Bauby’s fantasies, his memories, his regrets.  The film is almost experimental at times.  You can’t help but feel empathy…and horror; it makes you want to throw yourself into life and experience it to the fullest.  Let’s do it.