The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, based on Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir, 112 minutes, rated PG-13, in French with English subtitles.

Julian Schnabel’s "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is the moving, real-life story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Almaric), a former editor of the French fashion magazine Elle who, at 43, suffered a massive stroke that left him with something called "locked-in syndrome."

The condition is as devastating as it sounds.

Though Bauby’s mind returned to full capacity upon waking from the coma induced by the stroke, his body was paralyzed. The only exception was his left eye, which he was able to use, and which became his only tool for communication in the months that followed.

Recently, the movie earned Schnabel ("Before Night Falls") and his screenwriter, Ronald Harwood ("The Pianist"), Academy Award nominations for best director and best adapted screenplay, respectively, which they deserve. Their film is based on Bauby’s own memoir, published days before his death in 1997. If it’s the fact that Bauby was able to write a book at all that makes the movie such a testament to the human spirit, then it’s his sometimes sarcastic, other times deeply regretful internal monologue that makes the movie as powerful and as complex as it is.

Over the course of 14 months, Bauby dictated his memoir to Claude (Anne Consigny), a woman who became his closest confidante, by a system devised by his speech therapist, Henriette (Marie-Josee Croze). The system involved Claude saying the most used letters of the alphabet first until she came upon the letter Bauby was seeking. When he stopped her with a blink, she noted the letter and repeated the process. Eventually, a word was formed, then a sentence and finally a book. So, you can imagine the effort this took.

Meanwhile, Bauby’s life — once a misguided, selfish force that lived large in Paris (as his imagination does now) — doesn’t stop just because his body stopped. Now, it must be reckoned with by those who come to visit. This includes bitter, conflicted Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner), the jilted mother of his three children, as well as a host of friends who hold him in varying levels of esteem, not to mention unwanted jolts of pity.

Bauby’s guilt-ridden girlfriend (Agathe de la Fontaine) visits by a tense telephone call, and his father, beautifully played by Max von Sydow in what should have been an Academy Award-nominated performance, only calls as well. At 92, he is too weak to visit his estranged son, and so all he can do is phone him and tell him how much he loves him, which leads the movie into some rather deep emotional waters.

But never into cheap sentiment. In spite of the rawness the film’s subject and its outcome court, Schnabel wisely didn’t create a weepy — far from it. This is a film about a flawed womanizer with little time for his children who comes to face himself by the vehicle of his own memoir. Bauby wasn’t pleased with what he saw there, but at least he had the courage to look, which allows you to respect the man in ways that make room for forgiveness and, in the end, a deep, unexpected sense of loss.

Grade: A

See the trailer below: