Hi Aki,
This is an adaptation (directed by Julian Schnabel) of the book of the same name written by Jean Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle magazine, after he had a catastrophic stroke. Totally paralyzed, he could only communicate by means of blinking his one good eye.
Now this is rather like My Left Foot in that the book is hailed, at least in part, simply because it was physically hard to write. I haven’t read the book and don’t know its qualities.
The movie is excellent though. Schnabel was nominated for Oscar for direction, and won it for Golden Globes. He takes us inside Bauby, which is difficult with so much of the movie POV shots. Eventually he breaks from this, but not before solidly anchoring us inside the head of the paralyzed man. Throughout, we hear the inner voice of Bauby, sarcastic, skeptical, sourly humourous. We get a feeling for the character which is very well drawn.
Structurally we are given closure by the use of an old French classic song, ‘La Mer,’ in an old recording; the film opens with Bauby’s first waking moments after 3 weeks in a coma, unable to remember ‘the accident’ which put him there. I assumed it was a car crash. Around the 2/3 mark he tells someone (by blinking his eye) that he wants to remember the accident.
He begins to make progress, moving his head a little, grunting, which raised my hopes that he might recover. Then, suddenly, pneumonia, and his final dictation for the book. The book is released to rave reviews, but he is fading as his ex-wife reads the reviews and shows him the published book.
Throughout the film we have had flashbacks and inventive dream-fantasy sequences that bring us (and him) out of the hospital. One more follows, as he remembers ‘My car…my new car’ and he drives off from his girlfriend, goes to pick up his son from his ex-wife for a day, and drives down the country roads. A feeling of apprehension rose in me, I knew this drive was leading us to the accident, and I wondered about the son…but we had seen the son visit his paralyzed father, or was that a ghost, and he was unable to accept he had killed his son in the crash?
Then right in the middle of talking to his son, Bauby begins to have a seizure. He can’t finish a sentence, trying over and over – he makes then an irrelevant remark about helicopters, and pulls over, stops the car. He has his stroke, terrifies his son, who gets out and runs to find help. The song ‘La Mer’ comes back up.
A title card tells us that Bauby died 10 days after the publication of the book.
One of the recurring images is of him in an old fashioned diving bell under the sea. This is how he sees himself in his current predicament, cut off, heavy, isolated, unable to communicate. The butterfly becomes a symbol of freedom and lightness, though I forget the specific reference which defines the butterfly. Anyway that’s where the title comes from.
Why is it moving? Well, Bauby is well characterized as I say, and the movie (and him) refuse to sentimentalize the situation – just the opposite. There are moments of humor. As we see him make little bits of progress, I gained some hope he might recover, at least part way.
There were also nice photographic techniques to indicate his waking up, blurry-eyed, not fully conscious, in the opening. These techniques were repeated at the final scene before the flashback/memory, another foreshadowing of the end.
Julian Schnabel is a name I know, but from what? Didn’t he make an art film about Basquiat? Or was that somebody else? I wasn’t expecting a French movie, but it was better not to try to americanize it. Maybe I liked it better because it was French, too. Also my experience of the movie, reading the subtitles more than hearing the inner voice and experiencing it as the movie should be experienced, put me at a little greater distance.
(written around 22 February 2009)
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