The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Julian Schnabel

Once upon a time, there was an extraordinary man, who led an extraordinary life, but didn’t know how much extraordinariness he had in him. Unfortunately, it took a cruel blow of fate that brought out this fortitude in him that he was till then unaware of - Fate that gave him his diving bell, and fate that made him a butterfly - Even though he was incarcerated in his diving bell, his imagination was as free as a butterfly among the flowers.

His name was Jean Dominque Bauby.

In his better days, he was a reputed editor of the Elle magazine. In his better days, he had a wife, a lover, and three beautiful kids who adored him to death, who did adore him till death.

One fine day, while driving his son to the countryside, Bauby had an unexpected severe stroke. A stroke that made him a prisoner in his own body, unable to move, feel, sense or speak. Diagnosed with a condition called LIS (Locked In Syndrome), Bauby had only one window to view the external world communicate with it when all his organs betrayed him – his left eye. This is where the movie starts.

Waking up three weeks after a prolonged coma, Bauby tries to grasp his surroundings but is unable to make any sense. He cannot see clearly with his eyes, and is unable to verbally communicate with everyone. He attempts to talk to everyone around him, but is confounded and perturbed to find out that no one can hear him. However, viewer gets to know his thoughts as they are self-narrated throughout most of the movie.

Once the doctors explain his condition to him, Bauby renounces all hope to carry on– dependant on others, trapped in the prison of his locked up body. “Like a sailor who watches the shore gradually disappear, I’ll watch my past recede, becoming ashes of oblivion. ” He expresses.

One visit, however, from a man called Roussin changes his perception. Bauby gave Roussin his seat on an ill-fated flight over four years ago that was hijacked in Beirut. For four years, Roussin was in captivity, but never lost his hope to be alive and free once again. Roussin tells Bauby, almost sensing Bauby’s desperation to die – “Hang on to the human inside you .” This, and a following conversation with his speech therapist, brings him around to the fact that “My imagination and my memory are the only way I can escape my diving bell”, and thus he embarks on a journey to tell a tale so profound and so moving that it must manifest the might of the human character and the ambition that can drive us to do exemplary things even if the most elementary capabilities are taken away from us.

Soon, with the aid of a beautiful and patient speech therapist, (played by Henriette Durall), who devises an ingenious method for their mutual communication, he begins to convey his thoughts and ideas, rather slowly. Instead of usual A.B.C… scheme, letters are arranged by the frequency of their usage (E.S.A.R.I.N…) and he blinks to choose the appropriate letter, painstakingly constructing word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page.

As soon as communication system is in place, he calls a publisher with whom he had a contract for a book, and tells her that he shall abide by his word, only if she can send across an interlocutor able to converse with him in his unique language. Thus commences a journey to transcribe his thoughts into memoirs. Jean-Do (as he is fondly called by everyone), flip-flops seamlessly from a world of his imagination to the world he inhabits. He transports himself from a world where he kisses princesses, dines with a beautiful woman, explores the beauty of the animal world (a montage of various documentary like sequences), and rolls around on a beach to another where he reminisces about his past with a mix of nostalgia and regret. He also recalls important conversations with his father, a man confined to his own apartment much like Jean-Do is to his body.

However, all is not so bad. People around him, especially women, seem to love him, and care for him. His estranged wife comes along with the kids to visit him regularly and helps him as much as she can. His lover, never shown in the movie, talks to Jean-Do through his ex-wife over the phone, telling him that she loves him too much to see him like that. Jean-do, in his confined state, does not lose his innate sense of humor, even when it is directed at him. His interpreter, Claude, a picture of serenity and patience, is devoted to him like a believer – it’s an enviable kind of love. Same can be said for Henriette (He is just a very admirable man, I reckon. That would make anyone happy, especially one in his condition).

After a few months, the book is completed (and critically acclaimed). However, Jean-Do contracts pneumonia and dies a few days later, only to leave a legacy that comes closest to an epiphany from a man, according to Julian Schnabel, “on the edge of his existence, almost from a world beyond.” The movie ends with a scene of Bauby driving with his son prior to his stroke.

The screenplay and cinematography were the heart, soul and eyes (literally!) of the movie as they were crucial in capturing and portraying the essence of the memoir. Initially, the camera is practically embedded in the eye of the central character, seeing the world around him as he would, hazy initially, becoming sharper as it progresses adjusting according to his vision. The camera then “steps out” from Jean-Do’s body, and gives the viewer a perspective of Jean-Do’s condition. I call it the “spirit effect” – the camera is like a metaphysical spirit moving in and out of a body or a space, capturing all angles. (If there is a technical term for it, I am not aware of it)

The dialogues are so meaningful that each one of them is a script in itself. Every statement conveys exactly what it is meant to. Even though I watched it with subtitles on, I was (happily) amazed at the translation…didn’t dilute the essence of the dialogues at all. The photography is to die for – The movie captures the breathtaking French locales in absolute perfection. Characters, especially Mathieu Amalric as Jean-Do, really make a stupendous impact, considering many of them were actually picked on the sets, and had little or no acting experience. This surely gives the movie an earnestness that is hard to come by when one is making a movie based on a memoir that is as stirring as they get.

The most perfect part of the movie was the ending, which shows many other moments in the beginning in reverse – it represents closure, putting everything back together, coming to a complete circle for Jean. Although he dies in a way he would have liked least, he leaves his footprints in the sands of time forever.

I heard the memoir is even better, and I’m thinking if the movie was such a stunner, the memoir must be a bomb. 

Father's Day for Bauby