Bweinh! Goes to the Movies — The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

March 12, 2008, 10:00 am; posted by
Filed under Articles, Chloe, Featured, Movies  | 3 Comments

The screen is blurry, and I blink several times to clear my eyes. No, still blurry. I blink again. So does the screen. A little better. There are shapes moving about now. The screen blinks again and the shapes become people. It wasn’t my eyes.

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of French Elle, who suffered a stroke at the age of 43 and lived the remaining two years of his life locked inside his paralyzed body. The opening scene is a rendering of Bauby waking from the coma and learning that he has locked-in syndrome — he cannot speak, he cannot move, and he cannot communicate at all, despite his fully conscious and capable state.

But Bauby is a remarkable person, and so he does not only spend his last years longing for his past life and the release of death. Though he cannot speak, Bauby can blink his left eye. Therefore, his speech therapist devises a simple yes-no blinking system, then goes on to develop a list of French letters organized from the most common (e) to the least (w). She recites this list to Bauby until he blinks, thus enabling him to slowly spell out words and communicate with people. In this way, Bauby writes a book: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, an abstract personal narrative on which the film is loosely based. The final manuscript is strong and pristine, every word’s worth and work weighed by hours of solitude and stagnancy.

Throughout the film, the director parallels Bauby’s current life with his past life — being trapped inside his body as an invalid, juxtaposed with his life filled with supermodels and lovers and the mother of his children, who stays by him to the end, but whom he continuously reminds us is not his wife. There are scenes where, in flashbacks, he sneers at the invalids in holy places hoping for a miracle, and scenes where he is the invalid being wheeled toward the blessed springs. There are scenes where he plays with his three children and jokes obscenely with his teenage son, and scenes where they play around him, incapable of playing with him.

The film enables the audience to live life through the eyes of someone with locked-in syndrome. We experience Bauby’s muteness, humiliation, and helplessness alongside him. We feel trapped and frustrated and suffocated as he does. And when the movie ends we release our breath, unaware that we were holding it the whole time, dreading with Bauby the end.


Comments

3 Comments to “Bweinh! Goes to the Movies — The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”

  1. Steve on March 12th, 2008 9:40 am

    It was impossible to watch this movie and not experience with Bauby the horror and helplessness, his complete dependence on others. It was easily the best film I have seen in years.

  2. Djere on March 14th, 2008 12:56 pm

    Horror and helplessness… sounds like a killer date movie, Steve…

  3. Cummings on June 13th, 2008 4:59 am

    I loved “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, but the movie I’d rather see is “My Stroke of Insight”, which is the amazing bestselling book by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor. It is an incredible story and there’s a happy ending. She was a 37 year old Harvard brain scientist who had a stroke in the left half of her brain. The story is about how she fully recovered, what she learned and experienced, and it teaches a lot about how to live a better life. Her TEDTalk at TED dot com is fantastic too. It’s been spread online millions of times and you’ll see why!

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