The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is like an episode of House, but in French and without Dr. House. Full of fascinating medical procedure about a rare disorder, the compelling film transcends disease movie pitfalls.
Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Author Jean-Dominique Bauby (Matthieu Amalric) suffers a rare form of stroke at only 42 that leaves him completely paralyzed from head to toe. His only means of communication is blinking one eye. The other has to be sewn shut. His rehabilitators devise a system that allows him to communicate with blinks and he ultimately writes his novel by dictation.
Right away the film captures the frustration of having an alert mind in a paralyzed body. The point of view works. We're in that head with him. It's not a gimmick. At first we only see the brief glimpses of himself in passing reflections or quick flashes of memory.
The procedure of dealing with this condition builds like classic storytelling. Each little aspect of the diagnosis brings new frustrating troubles, and each form of rehabilitation is so minutely helpful that it both inspires and frazzles.
The fact that Bauby actually creates a life for himself is outstanding. He has art he can enjoy, work he can do, fun he can have and peace.
As the flashbacks get longer, explaining more of his backstory, the drama becomes a tad less interesting. Once they establish the rules of his new life, these are just various exercises as he resolves his relationships. There are some truly juicy situations going on, but maybe it's my left brain that just wanted to see how the medical story resolved.
There are more subtle developments as the story goes on. Numbers become an inconvenient nuisance.
The translation of letters is tricky too. His system blinks for each letter he wants to use to spell a word. Well, he's spelling French words which are translated by very different letters. So as they go through letter by letter, the translation just spells out the English word, even though it's obviously a different letter in French. Eventually, they just wait until he spells out a whole word to translate it.
I think Bauby's whole stroke-overcoming system for spelling out sentences is a metaphor for text messaging. People are wasting their lives typing in letter by letter on their phone instead of just talking to each other. It's like they all have a social stroke.
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