Le scaphandre et le papillon

Plot synopsis:
On December 8, 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby - age forty-three and editor-in-chief of the world-famous fashion magazine Elle - was living the "good life" to the extreme when he became the victim of a devastating cerebro-vascular accident that left him in a state of total paralysis, incapable of any verbal communication, in what is known in the medical community as "locked-in syndrome." His mental faculties totally intact as he lay motionless in his bed at the Marine Hospital of Berck-sur-Mer in northern France, Bauby learned to communicate with the outside world using his left eyelid, the only part of his body over which he still had any control. During the next fourteen months, using a communication code developed by his therapist and his publisher's assistant, who transcribed this code, Bauby was able to compose, letter by letter, a lyrical and heartbreaking memoir of his life struggle. Bauby died in 1997, two days after its publication.As the film opens, Bauby, known as Jean-Do to his intimates, comes out of a three-week deep coma, unaware of what happened to him, what is going on around him, and where he is. What we see is not a person lying in a hospital bed, but a blurred image with some silhouettes moving in and out of it. "What's going on?" we ask, and so does Jean-Dominique, in a voice-over (Mathieu Amalric). The image soon becomes clearer, and we understand we are looking subjectively, from Jean-Do's point of view, at a hospital room.. Soon, the face of a man who identifies himself as Dr. Mercier (Jean-Philippe Écoffey) appears in our field of view, asking questions. Jean-Do answers, but his answers are not understood by the doctor, as Jean-Do cannot speak: we are only hearing his internal voice.Suspense is built as the patient's face is progressively revealed. We first get a glimpse of Jean-Do's face reflecting in a mirror as he is being wheeled in the great hall of the hospital. His reaction to his reflection is, "God, who's that? I look like I came out of a vat of formaldehyde." Indeed, it takes about thirty minutes into the film before we get to clearly see Bauby's distorted, frozen face.Hospital assistants introduce themselves to Jean-Do, assuring him of their total dedication to his medical care and well-being, including his speech therapist, Henriette (Marie-Josée Croze), who will teach him the communication code, his physiotherapist, Marie Lopez (Olatz López Garmendia), and Dr. Lepage (Patrick Chesnais), a neurosurgeon who will supervise Jean-Do's care. Besides the hospital's therapist team, there is also Céline (Emmanuelle Seigner), his estranged partner and the mother of his three children.The therapy which permits a way to communicate consists of the alphabet, arranged in the order in which letters would be most often used (ESARINTULOMDPCFBVHGJQZYXKW); she begins reciting this alphabet, and he blinks when she says the needed letter. Once a word is begun, the therapist can often guess the word after a few letters, saving time and effort. The therapy starts on a rather disappointing note, when a desperate Jean-Do dismisses Henriette. "It won't work. Leave me alone." He changes his mind following the visit of an old friend, Roussin (Niels Arestrup), who had been a hostage for four years in Beirut. Relating his own experience, he tells Bauby, "Hang on to the human who is inside you," to which Bauby answers, "Easy said." However, on his second encounter with his speech therapist, to Henriette's great distress Jean-Do spells out, "I want to die." Jean-Do's remarkable strength of character eventually leads him to acknowledge his desperate situation, but also to realize that he still has his imagination and his memories. In a beautiful metaphor, we see a diving bell which physically imprisons the patient, and the freeing of his imagination in the form of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis and fluttering among fields of flowers.Bauby had a book contract with a publisher, Betty (Anne Alvaro), to write the feminine version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Betty is incredulous when, aware of her client's present condition, she receives a phone call from Henriette, informing her that Jean-Do is willing and able to fulfill the terms of his contract. Bauby, in order to survive his ordeal without losing his mind, had decided to write a memoir, if only to prove to his ex-colleagues that he is not a "vegetable." ("What kind? "he asks, "a carrot? a leek?") Still somewhat skeptical, Betty sends an assistant, Claude (Anne Consigny), to take Jean-Do's dictation. Soon the dictation starts. It's a slow, tedious process, where Jean-Do wakes at 5 a.m., and until 8 a.m., composes and memorizes parts of the text beforehand to be later "dictated" to Claude. The progress is painstaking: only one to one-and-a-half pages of text per day. Jean-Do develops a very close relationship with Claude, to the point that she seems to fall in love with him.In what follows, we see episodes of Jean-Do's fantasies, a mixture of memories and dreams, some poignant and some comical or sexy, with some fantastic mise-en-scènes. For example, elusive appearances by characters such as Nijinsky (Nicolas Le Riche) or Empress Eugenie (Emma de Caunes); symbolic scenes like Bauby in his wheelchair on an isolated pontoon in the beach at Berk; glaciers crumbling into the sea; a wild dinner at famed Paris' Le Duc seafood restaurant, with a beautiful woman. There is a marvelously touching recollection of Jean-Do joking and teasing his 92-year-old father, Papinou (Max von Sydow), while shaving him. Céline comes to see him often at the hospital and help out as much as she can, organizing a picnic on the beach with the whole family on Father's Day, or reading to Jean-Do the voluminous mail that he receives daily.The ending of this film consists of a dream sequence showing the opening scene of Truffaut's The 400 Blows, but this time the film is in color, as Jean-Do is driving through Paris in his new car. He is happily going to see his children at his estranged wife's country house. He takes his son, Theophile (Théo Sampaio) for a ride and suffers a stroke.

Tags: depressing, thought-provoking, flashback, inspiring, romantic, sentimental

Review:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about Jean-Dominique Bauby, (Mathieu Amalric) a popular editor of the French fashion magazine 'Elle.' At age 43 he is stricken with a stroke leaving him with lock-in syndrome, a medical condition that, except for his left eye, rendered him completely immobile.
At other times, with his imagination, you find yourself fluttering as free as a butterfly.Bauby wrote his story with the use of a unique sequence of letters specifically designed so he could blink his eye to communicate as he created every single word of his story.This film is in no way depressing.
Julian Schnabel's masterful The Diving Bell and the Butterfly allows us to better appreciate the simple pleasures in life by dramatizing the debilitating trauma faced by the 43-year old editor who suffered a massive stroke that left him unable to speak or to move his head and whose only means of communication was to blink one eye  one blink for yes, two blinks for no.Beautifully shot by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski with a screenplay by Ronald Harwood, the film begins with Bauby's confused awakening in the hospital after twenty days in a coma.
With the help of a speech therapist (Marie-Josée Croze), and a very patient transcriber, a code is developed that allows Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), called Jean-Do by his friends and family, to compose a book based on his experience.When the therapist recites the most-frequently used letters in the French alphabet, Bauby blinks when he wants to choose a letter.
Bauby's wife Céline (Emmanuelle Seigner), whom he left for exotic girlfriend Ines (Agathe de La Fontaine), visits him in the hospital and comforts him while Ines cannot bring herself to see him, saying that she wants to remember him the way he was.Realizing how his life had been less than exemplary, his stroke becomes an opportunity for redemption and allows him, if not to cleanse his soul, to discover that humanity lies in his consciousness not in material things or sexuality.
Uplifting, joyful, and inspirational while showing a man (played by Mathieu Amalric) completely paralyzed, apart from the ability to blink his left eye.There is a seamless blend of cinematography with the music to enhance the inner life of the main character, the viewer is at one with his inner frustration, his soaring imagination, his follies, faults and lusts.
The former France ELLE editor Jean-Dominique Bauby quoted his life as being trapped in a diving bell and free like a butterfly, and that was how he describes his life after a stroke left him only able to blink his left eye.
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly has become the title of his memoirs, which has become a best seller which Bauby will never get to see.American born director Julian Schnabel picked up the memoir and made it into a movie that will re-examine the way a person will view his life.
This time, though, his "artist" is a successful 43 year-old man, Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), a bon-vivant who becomes a victim of the so-called "locked-in syndrome" after a sudden stroke.
However, thanks to the ingenuity of one of his therapists, Bauby eventually found a way - by painstakingly spelling out each word one letter at a time - to not only communicate fully with those around him but to actually dictate an entire best-selling book with the use of his one eye.For the first twenty minutes or so, we see the world only as Bauby does, from the severely limited viewpoint of his one good eye, as he wakes up from his coma and begins to slowly realize what has happened to him.
At first, of course, Bauby is filled with a sense of hopelessness and despair, telling his therapist early on that the one thing he wishes for above all else is death However, as time goes on, Bauby begins to realize that, while his body may be trapped in a physical prison (a diving bell), his mind is now free to soar as never before into the realm of fantasy, imagination and memory (the butterfly).
The impressionism comes as Schnabel follows the course of Bauby's dreams, visions, memories and imaginings as they come pouring out in virtual stream-of-consciousness fashion, always backed up by Bauby's lyrical contemplation on what they mean to him both as an individual and as a part of the collective human race."The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a movie overflowing with imagination and surprise, as when, out of nowhere, Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood insert a lovely little homage to the opening scene in "The 400 Blows." Conversely, the scene in which Bauby has his right eye sewn shut against his unheeded wishes is quite literally harrowing.
It is at times like these that he is closest to having his identity as an individual subsumed by his illness and the people around him.Beyond the brilliant performances by Mathieu Amallic as Bauby, Max von Sydow as his 92-year-old father, and Emmanuelle Seigner as his longtime girlfriend, among others, special recognition must surely go to editor Juliette Welfling and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Spielberg's preferred cameraman) for the various miracles they have wrought in bringing this tightrope-walking tour-de-force to the screen.Heartbreaking but never sentimental, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is that rare film that will haunt you for a long time after it's over and will make you look at life in a whole new way..
It takes someone with painter/filmmaker Julian Schnabel's ("Before Night Falls") visual flair to bring such a fragile but empowering story to cinematic life, and screenwriter Ronald Harwood ("The Pianist") has done a compelling job translating Bauby's book into a highly charged story that complements Schnabel's bold film-making choices.The 2007 film begins with Bauby, known as Jean-Do to his friends, slipping in and out of consciousness, slowly realizing he has his faculties but cannot communicate with is doctors.
Even if the subject matter (paralysis) is difficult you want to keep watching to find out how much progress "Jean-Dominique Bauby" (Mathieu Amalric) will make.In addition to wonderful direction and visuals, what I'll always take from this film is (1) the incredible patience of the speech therapists (which includes Celine, his wife) and (2) continually wondering how frustrated Jean-Do must have felt in his horrible physical condition.All the actors were very good in this film.
Schnabel takes this based-on-a-true-story dealing with a paralyzed man and his one eye blink of communication and milks it for everything it is worth.There is definitely some innovative techniques being tossed around when the director is filming the early coma-scenes from the patient's perspective, though I would struggle to call these groundbreaking or truly unique.What kills some of the momentum and genuine emotion eventually is an unfortunate repetition that appears after we witness this nurses aide reciting the alphabet in French for the hundredth time, seemingly put in yet again to reiterate the struggle which Schnabel has already helped deaden..
There is a quality of artistic perseverance that Schnabel is attempting here, and it's probably just as admirable as Jean Dominique Bauby's own personal success at freedom from his own uncontrollable prison.Bauby, an editor for French Elle, got a stroke and consequently had "locked-in" syndrome, where he could still think, remember and imagine, but had next to no physical movements.
At least one scene (specifically, Jean-Do on the small square "dock" in the sea) reminded me of Polanski's first public short, "Two Men and a Wardrobe." And the memoir was adapted by Ron Harwood, who won an Oscar for his screenplay of Polanski's "The Pianist" (but the surreal thing about this is that Schnabel came on long after producer Kathleen Kennedy hired Harwood--it was Johnny Depp, whom she had first approached for the lead, who had expressed interested in the part and recommended Schnabel to her, per Kennedy at a screening and Q & A I attended November 10).In any case, the film is audacious, grueling, and beautiful in both cinematic and painterly ways.
When I did go see the film, I thoroughly felt what a wonderfully delivered thoughtful film in spite of the tough subject: a successful man of forty-three surviving a paralyzing stroke with just one eye, against all odds, being able to live on and blinked through delivery of a book/novel, interacting with other caring family, friends and nursing professionals, continuing to thrive beyond expectations.Thanks to director Julian Schnabel's passion and focused energy, along with his collaborators on this film-making experience, we are given the opportunity to see, yes, literally so, from the point of view of Elle Paris editor-in-chief Jean-Dominique Bauby's one left eye, the limited vision, activity - single eyelid movement to be exact - a means which he come to terms with and coping steadily, optimizing the improbable solution to an impossible situation, reaching out for his dreams and fantasies.
In essence, this is an uplifting journey of a film, boldly daring us to patiently go along with the trials and triumphs in the survival times of 'Jean-Do' Bauby.A diving bell: restraining diving suit ('scaphandre') hopelessly sunken into a dismal abyss, and a fluttering butterfly hopefully alights upon an 'unmovable' you, prompting fanciful delights and living on the seemingly impossible possible for a paraplegic with only one active eye.Bauby is skillfully portrayed, also through the perceptive approach of voice-over, by French actor Mathieu Almaric (who can be seen as Ismail, brilliantly played opposite Emmanuelle Devos' Nora in w-d Arnauld Desplechin's "Kings and Queen" aka "Rois et Reine" 2004).
Le Scaphandre et le papillon (2007), directed by Julian Schnabel, was shown in the U.S. with the title, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." The film is based on a book written by Jean-Dominique Bauby, who had led a charmed life.
The extraordinary story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of "Elle" magazine in Paris who suffered a stroke and was left unable to move anything save his left eye, justifies a film adaptation purely because it deserves to be heard far and wide.
From the magnificent portrayal of Jean-Michel Basquiat in his first foray with the media (much help from the brilliant Jeffery Wright) and the follow-up with Javier Bardem's Oscar-nominated performance in Before Night Falls (almost unheard of for a foreign film), the true star with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is not necessarily lead actor Mathieu Amalric, (who is fantastic), but instead the camera itself.
The true-life story of a magazine editor afflicted with locked-in syndrome following a massively debilitating stroke may seem better suited to the realms of heavy drama than feel-good jubilation, and yet The Diving Bell and the Butterfly arrives as just that.
This true story is taken from the book of the same name by the one time editor of French 'Elle' magazine Jean-Dominique Bauby who at 42 has a stroke that leaves him completely paralysed except for his left eyelid.
When the forty-three year-old editor of Elle Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) awakes in the Berck-sur-Mer hospital, he sooner discovers that he had a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) that caused a Locked-in syndrome; therefore his body is entirely paralyzed except for one of his eyes.
However, with the support of his physiotherapist Henriette Roi (Marie-Josée Croze), who has developed a mean of communication using the blink of his eye to associate to letters, Jean-Do decides to write a book using his memoirs and imagination.Yesterday when I saw "Le Scaphandre et le Papillon" on DVD, I loved this movie a lot, but I did not know that it was the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby.
The synopsis printed on the back of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly beseeches the viewer to 'experience the triumphant tale of a man whose love of life and soaring vision shaped his will to achieve a life without boundaries." This statement leaves much to the imagination if little is known of the main character Jean-Do Bauby's true-life story.
Ironically Bauby's life is depicted as more of an imprisonment than one 'without boundaries." The film therefore leaves much to be desired in terms of its emotive impact on the viewer.After achieving a successful career as the editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Do Bauby suffered a stroke that left him physically paralyzed although mentally acute.
Jean-Dominique (Jean-Do) Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was the editor of the French magazine 'Elle', living with the beautiful Céline Desmoulins (Emmanuelle Seigner) and their three children, when during a ride with his son he has a massive stroke that leaves him completely paralyzed (the 'locked-in syndrome').
And, since it's currently on the IMDb Top 250 List (currently #243), obviously a lot of people found it to be worth seeing.When the film begins, you see what the world looks like when a man (Jean-Dominique Bauby) very, very slowly awakens for the first time in weeks.
The diving suit could have been his cocoon and to become free afterwords, a butterfly.Besides missing the big turning point, there are unfinished stories, for example Bauby is called by his mistress in the presence of his wife, who apologize postponing her visit, and she says that she wants to see him  this is a well-built moment, but after he tells her that he misses her each day, we don't hear anything about her.The play of actors is decent, with the exception of Max Sidow, the father who cries all the time..
Biographical dramatization of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the 42-year-old French editor of Elle magazine, who suffered a frightening stroke in 1995 which put him into a coma for three weeks; upon awakening in the hospital, he discovered to his shock and amazement that his brain was fully-functioning while his body was paralyzed nearly from head to toe, with only his eyes as his tools of communication (which quickly became one eye, his left, after the right one was sewn shut for fear of infection).
Amazingly he still managed to write a book of which this amazing film is based on.'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' is the remarkable true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby , a successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of French Elle, who believes he is living his life to its absolute fullest when a sudden stroke leaves him in a life-altered state.
One of the most innovative and extraordinary pieces of cinema ever produced, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is and intense yet touching psychodrama about a man who was almost completely captured inside his own body yet was able to move more freely than most people ever will.The story is about Jean-Dominique Bauby, a wealthy and wild living Frenchman who was editor of Elle magazine and had a life worth living.
A truly phenomenal piece of film-making and storytelling, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY is poignant, frightening, and not-just-a-tad funny.Based on the real-life story of Elle Magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (i.e., Jean-Do) who suffered a massive stroke leaving him only able to communicate via eye blinks, the story is so human, so entertaining, and so well presented through the use of first-person experience from Jean-Do's perspective that it won over audiences worldwide.
With the help of a very patient scribe and the love inspired by his family, he writes about his rare condition in the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon), dictating it letter by letter, blinking at the correct letter as a writer narrated the alphabet.Achingly funny and bittersweet, director Julian Schnabel won Best Director in Cannes for this movie, and was also nominated for an Oscar.
On the face of it, this French film, from a non-fiction book, is a real downer; Jean-Dominique Bauby, in his early 40s and the high living editor of "Elle" magazine, is trapped by a stroke inside his body unable to move anything except his left eyelid ("locked in" syndrome).
The rest of the supporting cast helped made this movie pretty engaging, no doubt the key female characters in Jean-Dominique's life being quite the eye candy themselves.The Diving Bell and the Butterfly well deserves the accolades bestowed upon it, and it is likely to do well in the upcoming Oscars too.
Try to imagine the loneliness and solitude of being "locked inside" your own mind dependent always on your left eye blinking skills and the patience of others.Mathieu Amalric (American audiences may remember him from "Munich") does a nice job of capturing both sides of Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor of "Elle" magazine.
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY is a French film about one man's true account of what it feels like to experience the medical condition called locked-in syndrome.
It is the amazing true story of a French magazine editor who suffers a major stroke and is left "locked in" to his physical body, unable to communicate or move with anything more than his eye.I was moved beyond belief by this film.
The film's title comes from the emotional sense of despair he (Bauby) experienced during his paralysis (the feeling of being trapped in a diving bell),but also the want to soar like a butterfly from his prison.
The film deals with the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a former editor-in-chief of the French edition of Elle Magazine who suffered a massive stroke which left him in a coma for three weeks.
Being able to communicate by blinking his only functioning eye, the plot covers the monumental task he undertakes to write a book, one letter at a time.Directed by Julian Schnabel, the first act of the film is shot entirely from Bauby's perspective that puts the viewers in the protagonist's shoes, allows them to experience the confusion & frustration that he's feeling, and broadens out once the extent of his damage is fully revealed.
The true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; only his left eye is not paralyzed.Director Julian Schnabel is a pretty amazing guy.
Other than my eye, two things aren't paralyzed, my imagination and my memory."Julian Schnabel's French film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is a powerful and emotional film about a man suffering from locked-in syndrome due to a stroke.
It's all based on a true story and the novel that got written by the real Jean-Dominique Bauby 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', with just his left eye.Actually, the movie isn't even being all that dramatic at all.