The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Review

Let me preface this review by saying: I am a complete sucker for film. In person, in conversation, to most people, I'm a cynic and a wise-ass, but if you set a halfway decent scene in a film to the right piece of music, I'll get chills every time.

But though I am so prone to falling under the escapist thrill of the theater, losing myself in another world, they all vanish when the house lights come up, and the world fades from vision like a camera flash- by the time I see something on video, it's not clear what the magic was in the first place.

Given all this, however, I still cannot even begin to describe to you how profoundly moving, and lasting, Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon) was for me. The true story of a man paralyzed by a stroke, and only able to communicate by blinking his left eyelid- Jean Dominique Bauby painstaking composed a memoir in his head, and slowly dictated it to a transcriber in 1997.

And while I realize that the truth behind the story does most of the heavy lifting emotionally, it's to the film's ultimate credit and benefit that it doesn't approach it in any way with a Reader's Digest, disease of the week melodramatic approach- Bauby's memoir is wry and uncomplaining, a tone preserved for his character.

There's no cloying voice-over, there's no forced reconciliations, and no attempt to disguise the complicated relationship between Bauby and the estranged mother of his children. Instead, Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Hardwood, both Oscar nominees, make the film as subjective and visceral as possible- the first ten minutes are hazy, out of focus and incoherent, as the audience experiences waking up with Bauby after a three week coma, to discover his "locked-in" syndrome.

The camera eventually moves outside of Bauby's perspective, as his family and friends come to visit, or don't- his girlfriend doesn't work up the nerve, and in the film's most moving scene, his aging father (a completely robbed-by-the-Academy Max Von Sydow) has to call him on the phone and awkwardly communicate with an interpreter, since he is unable to travel to the hospital where his son lies imprisoned.

The hazy, dreamlike quality of the film's look is beautifully matched to the wistful, quick tone of Bauby's memoir, which is told entirely in vignettes of a few pages. Harwood does a wonderful cataloging these brief impressions into a powerful narrative.

When to See It: As Soon As Humanly Possible

Leftover thoughts:

• After much deliberation, I'm putting this in at number 2 on the top twenty of 2007 list- it's just not as complete a film as No Country, which is equally profound without relying on an unavoidable rush of empathy from the viewer. But choosing between two films so completely different is a fool's errand anyway.
• It's hard not to compare oneself to Bauby- especially since I've never finished a book (I'm a wannabe writer) with the use of my body entirely intact.
• Julian Schnabel- actually a New Yorker that learned French to make this film in the language it should be in. That explains the use of mostly English-language soundtrack music, though (like a great Joe Strummer song over the closing credits).