MOVIE REVIEW: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
By: Scott Rader
5/2/2008
What the hell? The ball was seriously dropped here. Sorry Paul Thomas
Anderson. Sorry Coen brothers. Julian Schnabel was the best director of
the year. And, we know we're beating a dead horse, The Diving Bell and
the Butterfly deserved a best picture nomination over Juno.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the story of former ELLE editor
Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a baffling stroke at the age of 43.
He thus becomes paralyzed except for the use of his left eye.
Here's
where the film becomes so amazing. Most filmmakers would take this
story and make it depressing/sappy. Schnabel makes a film that is
compelling, hopeful, funny, imaginative and heartbreaking without being
manipulative. And Schnabel captures the claustrophobia or Bauby's
condition so beautifully that it's hard not to be drawn in. It's nearly
ground-breaking the way Schnabel captures the perspective of someone
who could only see the world with one eye. And he does it without being
too pretentiously artistic. It's amazing really.
But even more amazing is the memoir this film was based on. Bauby could
only communicate by blinking. But with the aid of an interlocutor and a
specialized alphabet wrote the memoir detailing what it was like being
trapped in the coma. It took him 200,000 blinks. And only ten days
after it's release he died.
His story is sad and fascinating. And the movie of his life is both without being pushy.
