The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

The book behind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one that both begs for and resists filming. The book is the self-told story of a French magazine editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffers a devastating stroke and learns to communicate despite his limitations. This, in outline, is not a remarkable story. But the particular circumstances say differently: Bauby was left by the stroke with "locked-in syndrome." His mind was fully functional, but his body was completely paralyzed except for his left eye. He could only communicate by blinking. And yet he wrote a book. See the appeal? See the problems?

To attempt to film this, you'd have to be very creative, and maybe slightly mad. A good thing, perhaps, then, that the director who did attempt it is Julian Schnabel, a visual artist as well as a filmmaker, who is possessed of both unique vision and strong temperament. I've read interviews with Schnabel. He can come off as a mass of quirks and pretensions. My fear going in was that his movie would as well. Fortunately, it doesn't.

Schnabel's film works because he remembers two things: that this is Jean-Dominique Bauby's story, and that that story is plenty remarkable all on its own. He makes the choice to start the movie with Bauby's situation. Literally. We begin inside his head, as he slowly emerges from his post-stroke coma. We see what he sees, and since Bauby (played by Mathieu Amalric) is paralyzed, this means what we see is limited. We hear Bauby's thoughts as voiceover, trying to make sense of what has happened. Almost all of the first third of the movie is filmed this way (including the sewing shut of Bauby's useless right eye), and the effect is startling and uncomfortable. But notice that it does two things: it establishes that the film is Bauby's subjective experience, and it establishes that the emphasis will be on the consciousness inside rather than on the damaged body. It is many minutes, in fact, before we plainly see an "outside" shot of Bauby at all. This is a film about a man, not a condition.

The man's story emerges thanks to his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze), who devises a system of dictation: she recites the alphabet in order of most frequent use, and Bauby blinks to choose a letter. In this way he spells out words. And in this way, he decides to take advantage of an existing book contract and write a sort of memoir (the "conversation" with his incredulous publisher is one of many priceless moments). The movie is true to the dictation method, although those around Bauby become adept at "guessing" his words, no doubt thanks to time constraints in the screenplay. In some scenes, the method is eventually abandoned, and just Amalric's voiceover kicks in, but the device is used enough that we do not forget it. In this way, we learn things about Bauby before his stroke: he edited "Elle" magazine. He has three children, a wife, and a mistress. He has a father (Max Von Sydow), who keeps tabs on his son's social situation with wry European wisdom ("Having a mistress is no excuse for leaving the mother of your children; the world has lost its values," he says. Try that line in Iowa.). He lives fast; he likes sports cars. The movie wisely does not judge Bauby. Before the stroke, he was what he was: a successful, high-spirited Frenchman who loved both his children and his mistress. What praise he deserves after his stroke is for his strength of spirit, not his morality. His memoir chronicles his finding a way beyond his situation (hence the title images), not a reform of his character. It is enough that this man, in his state, became an author without his also becoming a saint. In flashback and fantasy, Amalric (more recently James Bond's nemesis in Quantum of Solace) plays the mobile Bauby with enough low-key charm that we can root for the man without approving of all his behavior, and his voice-over as the paralyzed Bauby is serious and humorous as is appropriate without overselling either.

That a remarkable situation is presented so matter-of-factly is the film's strength. Yes, it has its obviously artful moments, and yes, it has some wonderful cinematography once it is allowed to. But what sticks with me are the "real" moments: the way few of Bauby's early visitors really look him in the eye, the way Bauby's limited vision takes in whatever it can (from his therapist's breasts to billowing curtains to a distant lighthouse) whenever it can, the way he finds uncomfortable situations funnier than his caretakers do. It is also refreshing to see a movie where a father-son relationship is poignant without being overwrought or overlaid with pop-Freudian baggage. There are no false crises here, nor are there any miracles beyond the basic existence of Bauby's story.

There are countless ways to have gone wrong with this material, all of which Schnabel and his collaborators avoid. In doing so, they have made a remarkable film about a remarkable man. Perhaps it took an artist to make this film. After all, a good artist is said to have "a good eye," and Jean-Dominique Bauby's story shows what can be done with only one good eye. Those of us who fancy we have two should take notice.