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The Diving Bell And The Butterfly [DVD] [2007] |
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Staring:
Mathieu Amalric, Lopez Garmendia, Emma De Caunes, Jean-Philippe Watkins, Nicolas Le Riche
Director:
Julian Schnabel
Average Customer Rating: 
List Price: £19.99
Our Price: £3.55
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Amazon.co.uk Review
The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralysed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an outstanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humour and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown painter, but he's crafted an intimate visual poem, a humble sonata about life at its most fragile. --Bret Fetzer
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 Film realisation of Bauby's stark memoir doesn't really get inside his head, 2009-10-27
Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir The Diving-bell and the Butterfly is a great book, produced by a uniquely difficult set of circumstances. Reduced in a moment from high-flying success to paralysis, it is by necessity economical, sparse. As Bauby's exterior life withers, his interior life slowly grows. The revelation of this is the power of that work.
This was always going to be a difficult work to bring to the screen. Julian Schnabel takes the easy way out: he concentrates on the exterior events. The story - I cannot say narrative - is deprived both of its starkness and of its voice, for there is no narrator. So much of the power of the book is lost. This is not the old problem of a film's realisation being different to our imagination, but a difference that goes right to the core of what the book is about. If you haven't read the book: you might enjoy this film, but please read the book as well, it has much more power. If you have read the book: this film adds nothing to your appreciation of this story, and you are likely to be disappointed.
 Do I have a heart made of stone?, 2009-12-05
I think I may need to watch this film again as my views is in staggering contrast with the overwhelming majority. Perhaps it's because I knew nothing of Jean-Dominique Bauby prior to watching this film or perhaps I have a heart of stone or maybe I need to read the book, but this film did not stir my emotions. I found Bauby shallow, pretentious, somewhat misogynistic and a generally unlikeable character. It really wouldn't have concerned me if our 'protagonist' Bauby had kneeled over half way through.
Yes, Schnabel does an excellent job of portraying the locked in inner space of Bauby, the cinematography is beautiful and the acting is up to par which is why I've given it 3 stars. However these strengths are almost ornamental since the film does not resonate with me emotionally.
amazing, 2010-05-19
i have seen this many times before buying and the film is stunning.
It is shot in a way that you remember it long after, there is perhaps a name for the style but i dont know it. The first time i saw this on television i came in part way through but it still fascinated me.
Rather nastily, when the film was on again and i had viewed it from the beginning i had some thoughts that he really was too big for his boots in the first place and that he was rightly humbled by his condition- obviously a bit of a severe and wrong reaction on my part.
Although his previous life is only hinted at he was a high flying editor , handsome and stylish. His disregard for those less fortunate was now brought into stark view.
However i would not wish this on anyone and the nightmare situation is horrendous.
Filmed completely from his viewpoint it made me consider the basics that life come down to. It is a cliche but it makes you value every day.
Please read the book too.
 A ground-breaking film of great heart, 2010-01-27
It's not often that a film comes along as exhilarating as this in terms of concept and execution. In terms of lighting, camerawork and editing it breaks every rule in the book - and gets away with it triumphantly. The script is by Ronald Harwood, a former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher who invented "The lady's not for turning", and who also wrote the screenplays of "The Dresser", "The Pianist" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch", among others. From this previous form, and from his stage plays, I would guess that what he presented to director Julian Schnabel was much more conventional than the final result. In which case, all credit to Schnabel, Janusz Kaminsky (cinematography) and Juliette Welfling (editor) for pushing the envelope so far and so effectively. You have to credit all three, because it's hard to know where the work of one ends and another begins.
Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was editor of French "Elle" magazine, a glamorous high-flyer who was striken by a massive stroke and as a result suffered from "locked-in syndrome", able to comprehend everything but completely paralysed save for an ability to flutter one eyelid (the other eye is paralysed too and in the grimmest scene in the movie the eyelid is stitched up because the eye does not lubricate itself and will go septic. The film documents his adaption to his situation - you can't say recovery - to the extent that with therapists he develops a language based on blinks which is effective enough for him to write a book about his experience and how it feels.
You would think from this that you would have a very static movie, but not a bit of it. By using a first-person camera technique we see everything as Jean-Do sees it, we hear his voice-over to get his feelings, and we experience the frustration and humiliation of his situation. We see the despair and grief of those around him - his wife (Emmanuelle Seigner), his girlfriend Ines who can't bring herself to visit him (Agathe de La Fontaine) and above all his 92-year-old widower father (a heartbreaking Max von Sydow). This is all the more moving because Jean-Do, and therefore we, can say nothing, do nothing, to ease the situation.
We identify completely with Jean-Do, so much so that when we first see him, about 35 minutes into the movie, it's a complete shock, because we've built up our own pictures of what he looks like. It immediately confronts our own ideas of normality. The director is wise enough to know that an audience needs variety, and we do see Jean-Do's previous life in flashbacks/dreams, but so strong is the identification we have that it is the "normal" scenes which seem odd, and we are impatient to get back inside Jean-Do's head where the "real" action is.
In a particularly crass interview among the extras, Schnabel maintains the film is about death and confronting fears of death, but I don't see it as this. Though at one point Jean-Do says he wants to die, all the impulses in the movie, his and others', are pulling in the direction of life. To me the movie is about how we cling to life, and how we make something valuable out of it given even the tiniest window of opportunity.
Julian Schnabel is one of those directors like John Maybury and most recently Steve McQueen who come from a visual arts background. As such he brings a richness of imagery and technique to his movie which is rarely seen. Not only is this a great movie, it will I think be a hugely influential movie on other film-makers.
"You're waking from a long sleep...", 2009-11-10
The films starts with Jean opening his eyes in hospital and realising that nobody can hear him speak, they can't hear him because his words aren't coming out of his mouth - his mind is alert, active, fully functional - but his body is useless to him apart from one working eye. He quickly learns that he has 'locked in syndrome', he is a prisoner in his own body and more vulnerable than the day he was born.
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly charts Jean's life from this point onwards, and the first part of the film is presented to us almost exclusively from his point of view as we see what he sees and hear his thoughts on everything from medical experts telling him about his condition, catching a glimpse of his own reflection, to meeting the people he knows.
His speech therapist devises a way to communicate, a painfully slow way of him blinking to select the appropriate letter from the list she reads out. It's during one of these early sessions that the film delivers an insight into how those around Jean value him when his speech therapist starts to get upset as she realises what he is saying: "I want death" - a powerful phrase which delivers a cold shiver down your spine. Her reaction is perfect, instead of a gushing reassurance she gets angry with him for being so selfish - there's no Hollywood sense of over-sentimentality here, what you get always feels genuine.
This is the true story of the successful French magazine editor whose glamorous life is changed beyond anything he could have imagined and the film manages to never become a grim wave goodbye to a fading light, instead it balances the heartache by bringing us the humour and wit of someone who was no less of a man because his body failed him. Of course the film is tremendously sad and I watched this with tears in my eyes at points, but this isn't the story of an extraordinary man - it's the story of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.
In a nutshell: We witness his silence, we see his rigidness - but we hear his thoughts and his laughter and it is those things which make the man. This film makes you reflect on your own life and celebrates the human side of life when everything else is stripped away. I'll certainly make time now to read the book of the same name which Jean 'wrote' whilst paralysed.
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Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.78:1
Audience Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Binding: DVD
EAN: 5060002835975
Format: Anamorphic, PAL
Label: Pathe Distribution
Manufacturer: Pathe Distribution
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Pathe Distribution
Region Code: 2
Release Date: 2008-06-09
Running Time: 112
Studio: Pathe Distribution
Theatrical Release Date: 2007 |
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