Review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) by Justin A — 28 Aug 2015

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is one of those rare films that mentally and physically exhausts you. There are films that challenge your patience, ones that suddenly cause you to be completely aware of muscles, of your brain energy, of your eyelids and how many times you blink per minute. Whether there is full reason for these cinematic tests is left up to the viewer and his particular way he reads into sequences unfolding. Other times the reason is clear and completely necessary.

How Director Julian Schanbel handled this screenplay/story was agonizing in an exquisite way. Jean-Do (Mathieu Amalric) suddenly wakes up, delirious, in a state of shock. We see what he sees. The fluttering, watered down, grainy, at times over-exposed photography. (By the way the film was shot by the great Cinematographer Janusz Kaminksi. A man I've greatly admired for over a decade) Jean-Do is in a hospital room. He doesn't understand what is happening. A doctor asks him to talk. He says a few words. The doctor asks him to speak. He realizes that he can only hear what he is saying in his head; which will become the internal voice-over/dialogue Jean-Do has through-out the entire film. His lips don't move. He's 98% paralyzed. The only shred of movement is with one eye.

Matheiu Amalric continues to amaze me as I slowly watch his work. He is an actor that has a great deal amount of history already built into the structure of his face, and with each character he plays he has the ability to make the audience believe in him.

I'll be unable to fully articulate the stark devastation at work in this film for this review. This film is an experience; it demands your attention, it demands your reactions without trying. Because 40% of it is from the point of view of the paralyzed man, you no doubt sense a certain amount of claustrophobia. However depressed and angry Jean-Do is during this film, he finds a glimmer of hope that life isn't all about what we physically do, because there are constraints to even physical things we dream of happening. And as corny and cliched as this is going to sound, some of the most imaginative and freeing moments are the ones created and remembered with the mind.

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" could have easily turned into a preachy, end of the year Hollywood Oscar bait film with big emotions forced out because of sappy score and over dramatic acting, but instead it turns into a fragile and realistic true-story that doesn't force anything, even though the director was undeniably detailed with his approach to the project.