The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

This is a film about a man who experiences "locked-in syndrome," where he is alive and conscious but unable to communicate with the world after a massive stroke. A film that could have been like any number of other films about medical dilemmas but it isn't, this is something completely different. No other film has shown what actually living with a particular ailment is really like. The first third of this film is shot from Jean-Dominique Bauby's point of view as he lies in a hospital bed able to move only one eye. We see only what he sees, from nurses moving in and out of frame to his simple gaze at the wind blowing into his window.

During this sequence that I was thinking the film would almost bee too painful to watch. You experiences the locked in syndrome along with him and feel trapped, wanting to break free. A speech therapist begins to work with Bauby, each day shes reads the alphabet, arranged in the order of most frequently used letters, and he will chooses a letter by blinking. Realizing he still has his consciousness his mind begins to race, to imagine the world and enjoy it. Heard from an internal monologue eventually he blinks out one of his first phrases, "I have decided to stop pitying myself". It is here that we are free from his body but not shown Bauby until he sees himself. He catches his reflection in a glass case and thinks he looks like something trapped in formaldehyde.

Filmed in French, these moments of Bauby working out sentences almost become rhythmical, it is imperative we see the great efforts he went through to write his memoir, it is his only way to show how his mind is working. There must be made a special mention to director Julian Schnabel who actually learned French in order to make this movie. The studio wanted to film it in English but he made the right decision, saying it would be foolish for the French to be reading subtitles in a film about one of their own.

You could call this film inspirational, and it is, but not in any traditional sentimental way. We are never given the big scenes of forgiveness or closure, we just follow along with Bauby's mind and his life with this disorder. Scenes end before you expect them to and things are left unsaid when you expect them to be communicated. On top of all that there is the wonderful cinematography that is not only able to capture his life from his view point but also his mind and spirit free from his body.