The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Review By: Brian DePasquale
BrianDePasquale @TheCinemaSource.com

Francois Truffaut has famous criteria for looking at films. He writes, "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between." I have modeled my short beginnings as a critic around that statement and several others by esteemed film writers over the years. Borrowing a bit from those influences, I believe that the most enjoyable films are the ones that express both the joy and agony of living life.

"Does it take the glare of disaster to show a man in his true light?" asks Jean-Dominique Bauby in his memoir about life after a stroke leaves him paralyzed from head to toe. He can see and hear, but cannot speak. He communicates by blinking letters of the alphabet to a speech therapist to formulate words. Once an editor/journalist for the magazine ELLE, he uses his gift for the written word to weave a beautiful account of his traumas.

Julian Schnabel directs the film adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with an elegant touch of sincerity. Creating a visual text out of such a point of view lends an interesting opportunity for experimentation and Schnabel is quite up to task here. A lesser filmmaker would trivialize Bauby's condition into segments of over-developed melodrama that would result in a constant barrage of genetically engineered sympathy. What is so insistently likeable about Diving Bell is its compassionate blend of joy and sadness. Bauby's text is not so much an examination of a paralyzed body, but a celebration of a roaming, imaginative soul, a heartfelt eulogy to memory reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yet the reference to Gondry's film is merely a thematic comparison. There is no film quite like this one.

Consider a scene in the film when two gentlemen enter Bauby's hospital room to install a telephone. Noticing his physical condition, they question the nurse why they need to do the installation. One of the men makes a joke about Bauby using the telephone and the nurse scolds him for being so cruel. Since we view the scene from Bauby's eyes, one might suspect we are supposed to feel sorry for the man, but that is when the film becomes valuable. Bauby laughs on the inside and enjoys the joke that was made. He claims the nurse has no sense of humor. I hope all filmmakers can note that Bauby's laughter is just as effective in producing sympathy as sadness would be. Perhaps what makes The Diving Bell and the Butterfly so vividly touching is its ability to bring lightness to such dark themes. If tears do stream while watching this film, they fall with warmth and a smile.

Most of the tragedy of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly lies in the face of an angel. The beautiful Marie-Josée Croze plays Henriette Durand, Bauby's hospital companion. She brings ...