The Diving Bell And The Butterfly [2007]

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralysed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an outstanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humour and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown painter, but he's crafted an intimate visual poem, a humble sonata about life at its most fragile. --Bret Fetzer

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Synopsis
Celebrated painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel's third feature finds him reaching new artistic heights with this audacious and personal biopic, based on the best-selling memoir of the same name. The film tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the world-renowned editor of French ELLE magazine, who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the inexplicable 'locked in' syndrome at the age of 43. Bauby's only way of communicating with the outside world was by blinking with one eye, and after several dedicated helpers--a string of impossibly beautiful women (Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Olatz Lopez Garamendia, Anne Consigny)--helped him to speak through this seemingly irrelevant gesture, he began to produce the words that would form his memoir. Along the way, as he swam in and out of consciousness, memories from his past swelled into the present, resulting in a cinematic experience that is at once heartbreaking and hopeful.
Schnabel somehow manages to convey Bauby's internal life with remarkable clarity, employing first-person perspective, striking cinematography (by the always great Janusz Kaminski), and Amalric's pained, life-affirming monologues. The result is a wholly original experience, a painful and tender portrait of a life that is made all the more exhilarating because of its close proximity to death.

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-08-17 rating:
Clever and Original Film
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a gripping French film based on a true story about a renowned magazine editor,who after suffering a devastating stroke became paralysed,only able to communicate by blinking one of his eyes. The acting in the film is of a very high standard throughout as we watch the immobile Jean-Do face up to his life altering circumstances at first with despair but then with resignation and finally acceptance of his horrible fate. He is lucky in that he has the love of two women,his wife and mistress to keep him going , as well as his three children and several attentive speech therapists and helpers. Their support bolsters his spirits and enable him to "write" his memoirs and share his experiences of life as a victim of "locked in" syndrome with the world.The film is at times depressing and sad , but it is vital and original as well.

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review by: alimack date: 2008-08-13 rating:
Not a patch on the book!
The book was extraordinary, both for how it was painstakingly written and the condition of JDB, but mostly because it was genuinely uplifting.

The film despite being beautifully shot and well played just can't compete, it keeps having to tell us things rather than show them and basically becomes a monologue. The imagery of the diving bell which worked to well in the book falls apart when it's shown on screen - it rendered too plodding and literal. Essentially it's un-filmable.

Disappointing, stick with the book despite being a brave effort.

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review by: date: 2008-07-04 rating:
Funny, moving and beautifully shot - the best film of 2007!
The book is so beautiful a piece of personal philosophy that I went to see the film with some trepidation, but if anything the film adds to the book by Bauby. The film is beautifully shot, funny and moving (but not in a sentimental way).

The director (who does not speak fluent French) chose to retain the original language of the book and this, I believe speaks volumes in a world of cinema where the digestability of a film by a mass audience is often classed as more important than retaining the soul of a piece of artistic cinema. The film was originally meant to be made by Pathe and star Jonny Depp - I think a tragedy was averted!

This film can be enjoyed (yes enjoyed - despite its theme it really isnt at all depressing) on so many levels - as a compelling human story, as an uplifting philosophy and as a work of art. You should not miss this film.

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review by: date: 2008-06-19 rating:
Touched by genius
Just when you started to feel that film had become little more than a merchandising exercise, along comes a release that reminds you what it can be. Reading The Diving Bell one could be forgiven for thinking it essentially unfilmable - so much is going on inside the head of the protagonist, there's little `action' not a great deal of dialogue, a slight plot... Yet, Schnabel's film is touched with genius and blessed with uniformly excellent performances, from the speech therapist down to the telephone engineers. Moreover, unlike other films dealing with disability, where the audience looks `at' the disability, here we look `from' - and there's a big difference. The decision to take the point of view from inside Bauby's head is inspired and completely transforms the relationship of the viewer to the subject. Technically and aesthetically it is a triumph - it's quite difficult to think how it could have been improved, even down to the soundtrack. Obviously, there's a depressing side to the tale of a man stricken by total paralysis(!), but the film stands as a testament to the remarkable resilience of the human spirit.


review by: date: 2008-05-30 rating:
A must see film - a total gem
Can I just start by saying: this film is outstanding. It clearly benefits from the remarkableness of Jean-Dominique Bauby's book - the notion of a man with 'locked-in' syndrome being able to write such a poetic story about his experiences using only the blinking of his left-eye to signal the letters of the words is, in itself, awe-inspring. It would seem an almost impossible task to turn such a book into a film, but it has been done here with considerable skill.

The film adopts a highly phenomenological approach, using blurred shots, muffled sounds, metaphor clips, flashbacks, to tell the story in a perfectly-timed and engaging fashion. Some of the frames, to my mind are incredibly powerful in evoking all the senses - one that particularly sticks in my mind is the 15 second shot of his girlfriend's hair, shot from behind, flowing in the wind, full-frame, on the way down to Lourdes. Images like this keep reminding us of how little we appreciate until its lost.

This is an emotional film, it made me laugh and cry. The ensemble cast is outstanding, I don't think there was a dud line, a dud shot or a beat-missed in the whole film. I can't wait for this to come out on DVD and I shall now be rushing off to read the original text. When I finished watching "The Diving Bell and the Buttefly" I thought that it was the best film I'd seen since "The Lives of Others". The more I reflect on it, I think its actually better. Don't miss this gem!

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Video . DVD & VHS . Substores . Regular Stores . World Cinema
Video . DVD & VHS . Categories . Drama
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Format (binding_browse-bin) . DVD
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . BBFC Rating (intended_use_browse-bin) . 12
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Release Date (feature_three_browse-bin) . 2000 and later
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Region(feature_browse-bin) . Region 2
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Editions (feature_two_browse-bin) . Standard Edition
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Language (theme_browse-bin) . French

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