The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon)
Directed by celebrated painter Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the 43-year old Parisian fashion editor and playboy who, at the zenith of wealth and success was paralysed by a stroke and suffered from “locked in syndrome”, where he is alive and conscious but unable to communicate with the world.
Bauby wakes up in hostpital from a coma to find himself paralysed from head to toe and unable to speak. The only part of his body he can move is his left eyelid, which he uses to communicate. The pretty speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) recites the alphabet in the order of most frequently used letters, and Bauby chooses a letter by blinking. Thus, letter by letter, blink by blink, he ‘dictates’ his extraordinary memoir on which this film is based.
If Bauby’s physical immobility is his diving bell, then his imagination is his butterfly – vivid, liberated and full of hope. Director Julian Schnabel uses his painter’s eye to create a watery canvas from which spring dreams, visions and memories - it is only in the past and through his imagination that Bauby can escape his agonising condition.
Moments from Bauby’s past flash across the screen, only to be cut short by clinical reality. Handsome and sardonic, one moment he seems invincible as he strides into a fashion shoot, unkempt and unshaven as one totally assured of his King of the Hill status; the next he is facing his father who berates him for leaving his wife. His story is a terrifying demonstration of life’s fragility.
In another sequence he remembers a “dirty weekend” he had in Lourdes with his mistress Inès (Agathe de la Fontaine). Wandering past devout nuns and disabled people coming for healing, Madonnas watching in judgement from every crevice, Bauby is unable to sustain the relationship.
The juxtaposition of past and present leads to agonising moments of self-reflection. During a visit from his estranged partner Céline et famille, the children sing him a song about a kangaroo escaping a zoo by jumping over a wall, tactlessly pointing to his own condition. Later Céline takes a phonecall from Inès, and must translate the intimacies that Bauby conveys through his winking.
Bauby’s caustic wit and frank, confessional approach stop the film from becoming overly sentimental. However, Schnabel manages to create an operatic level of intensity with smudging colours, frenetic camera movements and extreme close-ups. In a bold move he imprisons the audience in Bauby’s uncooperative body for the first 20 minutes of the film, even letting us watch as his eye is sewn up. Schnabel moves seamlessly from Bauby’s agonised, bedridden perspective to the third-person camera positions showing us the helpless man locked in paralysis – a far cry from the glamour of his former haute couture lifestyle.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a poignant reflection on what it means to live. Rather than sentimentalising death, the film faces mortality head on, with Bauby’s imagination acting as a antidote to his infirmity.
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