The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I have been putting off seeing this movie since its theatrical release. The story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a former editor of Elle magazine, who has a massive stroke and becomes "locked-in". He is completely paralyzed and has only the ability to control one eye. He and his speech therapist develop a (brutally tedious) mechanism for communication through blinking. This I knew before seeing the movie, and it completely doused my interest. A movie about a paralyzed guy who tries to write a book by blinking. I could not envision any possible way for this to be engaging.

The film is nominated for Best Director Academy and wins the Best Director Golden Globe last year (2008) and it is a well deserved award. Director Julian Schnabel finds a way to visually make this a first-person telling of Bauby's autobiography. The voice over of Bauby's thoughts (although no one else can hear) is pure genius and the behind-the-eyelid camera work eases the viewer into the reality of what Bauby is experiencing. The colors are striking, both inside and outside the hospital which provides a strange juxtapositon of beauty and hope with the depressing. This seems to be exactly the internal struggle Bauby was having as he alternately relied on his imagination and memory (the butterfly) to balance his living in the present (inside the diving bell, sinking to the bottom of the lake). A good mixture of triumph, hope, sorrow, frustration and the human spirit. Well worth the price of admission.
4-stars