movie review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

After suffering a massive stroke at age 43, Jean-Dominique Bauby awoke with "locked-in syndrome." He retained full mental capacities but was paralyzed, unable to speak or move, save the blinking of his left eye. That eyelid became Bauby's voice. His doctors devised a system wherein they read aloud the alphabet to Bauby and he would blink to signify a given letter; slowly he assembled words and sentences. In this manner, he dictated an entire book about his experiences after the stroke. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the film from Paul Schnabel which takes its name from that remarkable memoir, captures the monotony and frustration of life with locked-in syndrome; it is perhaps only natural that the film becomes an exercise in tedium.

A series of flashbacks help flesh out Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), but rather than endear the character to the audience, these curiously chosen scenes depict a moody man whose new girlfriend and sports car scream midlife crisis. Bauby's lack of agency doesn't help; a passive, unsympathetic protagonist is not an inherently strong one. We pull for him because his affliction is so tragic and because the dedicated, loving people around him want desperately for his condition to improve. These include a couple of gorgeous female doctors, his two young children, and their charming mother (whom Bauby forsakes, via blinks, in the film's most powerful, wrenching scene).

Schnabel uses interior monologue and point-of-view shots to take us inside Bauby's world, and these visual techniques, especially, comprise the film's most effective and creative elements. In one particularly grisly, memorable shot, we see Bauby's right eye sewn shut from inside. But mostly we watch Bauby sit and blink, and listen to him work through pity and self-loathing with the help of his attendees and memoir. Bauby occasionally uses his imagination to escape the dull, confined spaces of the hospital. These scenes, in which Bauby lives out fantasies of fine food and beautiful women, evince the film's gentle sense of humor. They act as moments of respite, not only for Bauby, but for the audience, who may welcome a break from the dreary oppressiveness of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.