He feels trapped inside his paralyzed body as if it was one of those old deep-sea diving bells, but his mind still flies as wild and free as a butterfly. Based on the astonishing memoir of the late French Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, the harrowing yet intensely life-affirming “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” puts us — almost literally — inside his struggle with what is called “locked-in syndrome.” Bauby endeavors to survive the devastating physical aftermath of a massive stroke and then to connect to the outside world with no moving parts left available for communication but his still-blinking left eye.
And it was in the blink of his eye that the arch, rakish bon vivant of the Parisian literati became a disoriented and utterly helpless captive of a seaside rehab hospital in northern France. Under the direction of famed fine artist and masterful filmmaker Julian Schnabel (“Basquiat,” “Before Night Falls”), from a screenplay by Ronald Harwood based on Bauby’s 1997 book “Le Scaphandre et le Papillon,” we enter this incredible true story just as our protagonist first wakes up from his coma and begins to realize his unfortunate fate. It is from behind his one eye’s view — with the audience seeing and experiencing what he sees and experiences — that the jarring first half-hour of the film unfolds, enhanced in its disturbing reality by Janusz Kaminski’s evocative cinematography.
Mathieu Amalric (“Munich”) renounces all temptation to overdo or wring out pity, as actors often do with disabled characters. His pure portrayal of the sympathetically flawed, often wickedly funny hero requires him to convey most of Bauby’s frustrations, memories and flights of imagination through a stream-of-consciousness voiceover narration. We hear the thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud to the loved ones and dedicated workers on whom he is entirely dependent.
It’s beyond striking how Bauby manages to “write” the memoir of his experience and eventually express his feelings to the estranged mother of his children (Emmanuelle Seigner) and his frail elderly father (played by the legendary Max Von Sydow in the movie’s most emotional scenes). Every letter of every word Bauby wants to say must be blinked out one at a time as a translator runs through the alphabet for him over and over again. The process had to have happened millions of times for a whole book to have been dictated, which makes Bauby’s actual writing assistant, Claude (portrayed in the movie by Anne Consigny) a saint of infinite patience.
To describe “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” as brilliant or inspirational is a little like calling Britney Spears dumb. Some things are so self-evident they don’t require words.
‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’
*****
» Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Max Von Sydow
» Director: Julian Schnabel
» Rated PG-13 for nudity, sexual content and language
» Running time: 112 minutes
» In French with English subtitles
