Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Take plunge: See ‘Diving Bell’
Jean-Dominique Bauby at a magazine photo shoot in a scene from "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a gripping, powerful film, without one single gunshot, no car chases, nary a fistfight and not one character jumps from one rooftop to another.
Also known as “Le Scaphandre et le Papillon,” it’s the true story of the swinging editor of the French Elle magazine.
He’s Jean-Dominique Bauby, played by Mathieu Amalric.
Jean picks his son up from his estranged wife one day, must pull off the road because he doesn’t feel well and has a massive stroke.
He wakes up weeks later in a hospital, feeling like he is encased in a deep-sea diving suit, hence the film title.
He can’t speak. Except for one eye, he can’t move anything.
Brooklyn-born director Julian Schnabel must meet the challenge of telling the story of a man confined to a hospital bed most of the time who can do virtually nothing for himself.
But boy, does he do a fabulous job. There are a few flashbacks, but much of it takes place in the present.
Jean’s mouth is deformed. A doctor must sew one eye shut. He communicates with the help of a speech therapist, played by Marie-Josee Croze, who could be my therapist anytime.
She arranges the alphabet from the most-used letter to the least. She starts to recite the alphabet until she gets to the letter of the first word he wants to say, then he blinks. Then she starts over, him blinking at the second letter.
Through this system, Croze helps Jean write a book about his life in complete helplessness.
Part of the film uses a technique used in an old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV episode in which a man is paralyzed after an automobile accident on a rural road and must wait for help.
We see through Jean’s eyes when he wakes up and realizes disgustedly he is in a hospital.
His blurred vision eventually sharpens. We blink when he blinks. (A cameraman actually placed his hands over the camera lens in a blinking motion.)
We hear his thoughts. We are there when he sees his deformed face while riding in a wheelchair down a hallway, his image reflected in the windows.
There are a couple of truly unforgettable scenes. One involves his former wife, Celine, played by Emmanuelle Seigner. She remains loyal to him, bringing their children to see him. She must field questions via the telephone from Jean’s girlfriend, who can’t bring herself to visit him in his condition.
Another memorable scene is a flashback, when Jean shaves his ailing father, played by the remarkable Max von Sydow. Now here’s a guy who has looked 80 for the past 20 years but still does a remarkable job of acting. He does well in Swedish, American and French films. Not bad.
Jean woke himself each morning at 5:30, memorized what he wanted to write that day, then dictated to his therapist, one blinking letter at a time. It became “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
He died weeks after the book was published.
He was a remarkable man chronicled in a remarkable film.

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
• Directed by Julian Schnabel, screenplay by Ronald Harwood
• Rated PG-13 for nudity, sexual content, some language
• Runtime: 112 minutes
• Spoken in French
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4