The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, La Moustache) and his eponymous book. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the recollection of what life is like with “locked-in syndrome” — a rare condition which leaves its victims utterly paralyzed. The story of Jean-Do (as he is known by his friends) is made possible by the single blessing that he still has the motor use of his left eye and, through the innovation of his speech therapist, the opportunity to communicate by virtue of blinking. After an expected bout of self-pity and loathing, Jean-Do lives up to the challenges of permanent immobility and perpetual boredom by writing a novel about his condition, one blink at a time. To describe the film as “a moving testament of the human will” and “a triumph of the human spirit” come off cliché (and sound a little fascist, no?), and yet that is what this film is (moving, not cliché and fascist). Even the cinematography captures Jean-Do’s condition perfectly: the first five or ten minutes of the film are shown from the discombobulated perspective of his left eye and the camera never strays from this perspective. Only when he delves into his mind or opens up to the world around him in his patient, methodical fashion does the camera gain distance and perspective on Jean-Do’s challenging condition.

Ugly - because that's what a theatre full of weeping people is.

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Starring Mathieu Amalric
Directed by Julian Schnabel