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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of Elle magazine, who has an unexpected stroke and wakes up to total paralysis, only able to use the blink of one eye to communicate. He has locked-in syndrome. Confined to his hospital bed, we hear his depressed, angry, passive-aggressive, confused thoughts as he attempts to come to terms with his situation. He is able to communicate by blinking as people go through various letters to indicate which ones he would like to use to form words. We watch him suffer when people carelessly misinterpret his words, his letters, or worse, flat out ignore any reaction or feeling he may be having, substituting their own opinions of what his feelings ought to be, instead.

The film is told through his perspective, starting with the camera angles. When he is lying in the hospital bed at the beginning, disoriented, the camera, too, shows his point-of-view, what he sees: a blurry world. We see what he sees when people talk to him or his friends and family come to visit him, so often unable to connect with the man that was once so important to them. We see some flashbacks to his fast-paced, glamorous life, as well as a few minor flights of fancy daydreams in the present. He lives in the past, in his memories, and to some extent, his fantasies. We only see him, when he sees himself, or when he is able to really communicate with other people and come out of his shell. In his invalid state, with the help of a patient scribe and a beautiful speech therapist, he completes an autobiographic novel over the course of a few months. With cinematography by the great Janusz Kaminski, best known for his recent work on many of Spielberg’s films, the photography is breathtaking and works exceedingly well to get us into this man’s head. But it’s slow, at times disorienting and difficult to watch. Although it is a well-executed, clever idea, that serves its purpose, it is very hard on the viewer to watch because the photography is sometimes blurry and disorienting.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly does an amazing job of telling an uplifting and realistic story about a man in a very sad situation, unable to communicate, and from his perspective. It is well shot and caring. But it feels long and boring despite some incredible visuals. It’s a worthwhile see, if you can get through it, as the camera work alone is worthy of lengthy discussion, but it is by no means an easy film for a rainy afternoon.

The Savages

Brother and sister, Wendy (Laura Linney) and Jon (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) Savage, are smart, somewhat neurotic, competitive, literary losers, who must suddenly care for their sick, abusive father, who suffers from dementia, when his girlfriend of twenty years dies, leaving him nothing. Wendy is a failed playwright and lonely enough to be in an unhealthy relationship with an immature married man. Jon is a terrible university professor, writing a book on Bertolt Brecht, too frightened to marry the girlfriend he loves when the alternative is that she be deported. He cries when she makes him eggs in the weeks preceding her departure, but he refuses to marry her. They have hardly kept in touch with their father for years, or even with each other except to bicker and criticize how the other is living his or her life.

The Savages is a drama with some insightful, at once hilarious and chilling moments of brilliance. It is clever and well-paced with wonderful performances by great actors, Linney and Hoffman, who capture just how desperate, confused, lame, and intelligent these characters are. In one scene, Jon gives a brilliant speech to Wendy outside a prospective nursing home for their father, about how the landscaping at nursing homes is for the family members of the patients, to relieve their guilt, and to mask the depressing reality that nursing homes are where people go to die. When he finishes, a woman walks by pushing her mother in a wheelchair, discussing the weather. The juxtaposition of this angry yet profound speech followed by the innocent passing of someone in the sad position he describes is at once heartbreaking and hilarious.

Wendy and Jon cope with caring for and visiting their father that they ultimately hate, while dealing with their own sibling troubles and life problems. The emotions and the scenes are quite realistic and engaging. Yet when it all ended, when things changed and the characters were able to move on with their lives and get their acts together, I felt like the film gave us little indication of how or why these things changed, aside from the mere passage of time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.