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.
