***
Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze
Directed by Julian Schnabel
Rated PG-13
Opens Friday
There’s nothing like a debilitating injury to induce nobility in movie protagonists. No matter how debauched, how inconsiderate, how unthoughtful someone is, once they’re paralyzed or bedridden they’ll soon come to see the world in a serene, reflective way, and inspire everyone around them. Such is the case in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Julian Schnabel’s biopic about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of France’s Elle magazine. In his early 40s, Bauby suffered a severe stroke that left him entirely paralyzed aside from his left eye, which he used to write an acclaimed memoir by blinking words out one letter at a time thanks to a code devised by his speech therapist.
Although the instinct to canonize his subject must have been strong, Schnabel concentrates mostly on atmosphere over melodrama, and thus ends up with a movie that is creative and often touching, if a little thin beyond its stylistic departures. Schnabel shoots much of the film through Bauby’s point of view, showing just how limited his perspective has become. It’s a very effective tactic at first, conveying the fear and disorientation Bauby experienced when he first awoke in the hospital after his stroke. Slowly, as Bauby becomes more aware of his surroundings, Schnabel shifts away to offer an outside viewpoint while remaining firmly focused on his main character.
As Bauby, Amalric does much of his acting in voice-over, representing Bauby’s evolution from fear and bitterness to self-pity and finally the inevitable acceptance. Flashbacks eventually give a bit of insight into Bauby’s previous life, and this is where the film falls short, since before the stroke he wasn’t exactly the most interesting person. The relationship between Bauby and his elderly, infirm father (an excellent Max Von Sydow) is the most compelling aspect of his past, and pays off later in one of the film’s most emotionally intense scenes. Bauby’s father, himself used to relying on his son for care, breaks down as Bauby tries to communicate with him over the phone using the cumbersome blink system.
The beautiful women who exist around Bauby, before and after the stroke, are little more than eye candy, and the sacrifices they make for him remain largely unexplored. Like Schnabel’s first-person shooting style, the dream sequences that represent Bauby’s fantasies of what he could do if he regained control of his body eventually get repetitive, and their effect lessens. The movie’s small powerful moments, though, are worth more than the entirety of your average noble-sufferer weepie.