The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Directed by Julian Schnabel (PG-13)

A French editor triumphs over a stroke that leaves him almost completely paralyzed.

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Julian Schnabel has made a compelling film out of an impossible subject, said David Denby in The New Yorker. In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the American painter turned filmmaker chronicles the harrowing last years of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s life. The editor of French Elle, Bauby was a Paris bon vivant who became a prisoner in his own body after suffering a massive stroke at 43. Diagnosed with “locked-in syndrome,” he awoke from a coma conscious but completely paralyzed—except for his left eye. Schnabel masterfully employs some of the “freest and most creative” camera work while bravely undertaking “heartbreaking emotional explorations” other films have never dared. The result is a “gloriously unlocked experience.” Adapted from Bauby’s memoirs, the film opens from Bauby’s point of view and stays fixated on that perspective, said Scott Foundas in The Village Voice. This results in an extremely stylized cinematography—“blurred images, flickering exposures, distorted wide angles, and extreme close-ups”—that often takes away from the emotional strength of the story. Schnabel’s technique is “suffocating” but essential, said Jan Stuart in Newsday. The audience lives through Bauby’s terror, exasperation, and the dawning realizations that come with his entrapment. It is the “visual freedom” with which Schnabel re-creates Bauby’s experience that makes The Diving Bell and the Butterfly soar.