THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
May 9-10, 7:30 p.m.
Rated PG-13; 112 min.  In French with English subtitles

 From a review by Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Jean-Dominique Bauby led a glamorous life as the editor of the French 
Elle magazine, but his lasting contribution to human consciousness has 
nothing to do with his carefree years as a man about town. His 
contribution is "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," which he wrote 
after suffering a devastating stroke.

The book, which he dictated by blinking his left eye, makes it forever 
impossible to forget or ignore the humanity inside people experiencing 
the most physically distorting and debilitating of illnesses. Speaking 
from the absolute depths, using the most thin and tenuous line of 
communication, Bauby assured people of an indestructible human essence 
inside the destructible human body.

In adapting the book, director Julian Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald 
Harwood overcame great difficulties. The subject matter is disturbing. 
The story, about a 43-year-old man paralyzed from head to toe, is 
infinitely sad. Bauby's book follows no linear story, but is rather a 
series of vignettes and ruminations. And, of course, with a paralyzed 
protagonist, the screen action is limited.

Lesser artists would have taken a programmatic approach to the 
material: They would have either told most of the story in flashback, 
with Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) appearing mainly in his able-bodied 
incarnation; or they would have pitched their tent almost entirely in 
the land of fantasy, a sentimental approach with occasional hospital 
pit stops.

Instead, Schnabel begins the film with a subjective camera, so that we 
see the world through Bauby's eyes as he wakes up to find himself in a 
hospital. We soon become familiar with his limited field of vision and 
aware that he can't move his head - thus things keep happening outside 
the frame. We hear Bauby's thoughts, and knowing what he wants to say 
helps us to feel just a hint of his frustration at not being able to 
communicate.

It takes some time for Bauby to realize that his imagination can help 
ease his misery, and that's when the fantasy sequences come. But 
Schnabel uses them sparingly and with care. He never pretends that 
imagination can offer anything more than temporary consolation, and so 
beautiful sequences of a magical hospital corridor, with miracle cures 
or a leaping Nijinsky, land with a thud into reality. The film's title 
describes the movie's delicate balance between taking wing and staying 
trapped with Bauby inside the physical equivalent of a diving bell.

Schnabel doesn't routinely give us extended shots of Bauby until about 
a third of the way through, and it's only when we're used to him in 
his disabled condition that we start getting flashbacks to Bauby in 
his able-bodied state. The difference is a shock, and it becomes 
impossible to look at him healthy without thinking of the illness to 
come.

Schnabel injects some sex appeal in the movie by casting beautiful 
women in every available role, including those of the nurses. Their 
beauty is a comfort to Bauby but also a point of rueful contemplation. 
The actresses - Emmanuelle Seigner as his ex-wife; Marie-Josee Croze 
as his speech therapist and Anne Consigny as his amanuensis - become 
the film's heart, each of them conveying moments of profound emotion. 
They do it without a tinge of bathos, and while looking straight into 
the camera. Max von Sydow, who appears in a couple of scenes as 
Bauby's father, is painfully effective.

By the end, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" achieves a victory 
over difficult material, and a story that needed to be told.