Thu, Jan 08 2009
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Published August 20, 2008 05:30 pm - WEEKENDER, August 22, 2008: “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a gripping, powerful film, without one single gunshot, no car chases, nary a fistfight and not one character jumps from one rooftop to another. Take plunge: See ‘Diving Bell’ Star Beacon “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a gripping, powerful film, without one single gunshot, no car chases, nary a fistfight and not one character jumps from one rooftop to another.
Also known as “Le Scaphandre et le Papillon,” it’s the true story of the swinging editor of the French Elle magazine. He’s Jean-Dominique Bauby, played by Mathieu Amalric. Jean picks his son up from his estranged wife one day, must pull off the road because he doesn’t feel well and has a massive stroke. He wakes up weeks later in a hospital, feeling like he is encased in a deep-sea diving suit, hence the film title. He can’t speak. Except for one eye, he can’t move anything. Brooklyn-born director Julian Schnabel must meet the challenge of telling the story of a man confined to a hospital bed most of the time who can do virtually nothing for himself. But boy, does he do a fabulous job. There are a few flashbacks, but much of it takes place in the present. Jean’s mouth is deformed. A doctor must sew one eye shut. He communicates with the help of a speech therapist, played by Marie-Josee Croze, who could be my therapist anytime. She arranges the alphabet from the most-used letter to the least. She starts to recite the alphabet until she gets to the letter of the first word he wants to say, then he blinks. Then she starts over, him blinking at the second letter. Through this system, Croze helps Jean write a book about his life in complete helplessness. Part of the film uses a technique used in an old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV episode in which a man is paralyzed after an automobile accident on a rural road and must wait for help. We see through Jean’s eyes when he wakes up and realizes disgustedly he is in a hospital. His blurred vision eventually sharpens. We blink when he blinks. (A cameraman actually placed his hands over the camera lens in a blinking motion.) We hear his thoughts. We are there when he sees his deformed face while riding in a wheelchair down a hallway, his image reflected in the windows. 
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