For such a true and tragic story, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is remarkably inspirational. It is also a remarkably courageous piece of cinema.
Even though an American director and British screenwriter are involved, the film was shot in France, in French, as Le Scaphandre et le Papillon.
It plays here with English subtitles. It is a masterwork on both an artistic and emotional level.
The director is New York-born eccentric Julian Schnabel, an internationally established painter who occasionally turns to filmmaking. In projects such as Basquiat, Before Night Falls, Lou Reed's Berlin and now The Diving Bell, Schnabel tells stories about artists who are fractured, damaged, yet enormously creative.
The subject of the new film, which was written by Ronald Harwood, is the late Jean-Dominique Bauby. He was once a well-heeled playboy who worked as magazine editor. He helmed Elle in Paris.
Driving in the country with his son, and pulled over to the side, Bauby suffers a massive stroke and is totally paralyzed. Only his left eyelid moves. He can blink. Otherwise, his wrecked body is a suffocating prison -- metaphorically like a traditional diving suit with a metal bell to protect the diver's head.
In hospital, desperate to die and end the suffering, Bauby learns to communicate with a nurse (played by the marvellous Quebec star Marie-Josee Croze). She teaches him to form letters, words, sentences through the blinking of his left eye. That is his flickering butterfly. His life starts to have meaning again.
Given the power of communication, Bauby writes the brutally honest, redemptive book that gives the film its title.
Harwood adapted the book, in English, for Schnabel's film. To remain true to Bauby's story, despite outside fears that it would marginalize the film's box-office potential, Schnabel had it translated into French.
The filmmaking is brave because Schnabel tells the story principally from Bauby's limited point of view. While there are third-person master shots, the core of the story is told in Bauby's narration and from his left eye.
The effect is unsettling yet intensely personal. You begin to feel at least a glimmer of what a person in Bauby's condition must feel. That identification generates empathy, but not false sympathy. Bauby is not always likeable. He is himself, flawed, human.
The role is played by French actor Mathieu Amalric, who deserves accolades and an Oscar nomination for his stirring portrayal. If he does not get one, there is no justice in Hollywood.
It is Amalric who makes Schnabel's risky approach pay off by working within Bauby's physical limitations to create a rich emotional portrait.
There are also flashbacks showing Bauby alive and well and messing up his life with his wife (Emmanuelle Seigner) and children. Bauby is charming, but not exactly a great husband or father. He has a mistress.
Meanwhile, his own father (Max von Sydow) struggles to connect with his son after the stroke. These scenes are spare, beautifully wrought and devastating.
When The Diving Bell and the Butterfly made its world premiere at the Cannes film festival, Schnabel won the best director prize. His gifted cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, generated the grand technical prize for his innovative approach to the camerawork.
Now that we are in awards season, more citations are expected. The National Board of Review in the U.S. named it the best foreign-language film of 2007; the Toronto Film Critics Association cited it as a runner-up on its list.
No matter what awards the film gets, however, none is better than the look of astonishment each viewer displays upon leaving the cinema.
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