As the film opens, one wonders, “Where are we?” The male narrative voice also wonders where it is. We see the world, blurry and blinking, through the eyes of a patient in a hospital room. For some time, we don’t see the patient, only what he sees. Someone notices our eyes are open and calls the doctor. He introduces himself and asks some questions. The patient answers and we, the audience, hear his voice, but the doctor does not seem to hear it. He tells us that our patient has had a stroke and it is not uncommon to lose one’s speech for a time. The patient argues, convinced that he is speaking. In truth, he is not; we are only hearing his mind’s voice.
So starts the journey of Jean-Dominique Bauby, our stroke victim, as he struggles to communicate with the world outside himself. Julian Schnabel’s film artfully brings to life the amazing and true story of Mr. Bauby and his life after his stroke. Based upon Bauby’s novel of the same title, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, presented by Miramax Films, brings us intimately into Bauby’s life.
Bauby struggles to understand where he is and what has happened. He does not remember the events leading up to the stroke. We learn, as he does, from the doctor that he has a condition called “locked-in syndrome”, a condition that causes nearly-complete paralysis.
Mathieu Amalric plays the difficult role of Bauby – able only to move his left eye, blink that eye, and with great difficulty, move his head. The majority of the film is seen through the left eye of Bauby – early in the story he loses the use of the right eye. As such, it is somewhat natural to feel his frustration, anger, and grief over the situation in which he finds himself. At first, Bauby is able to answer yes and no questions by blinking his left eye – once for yes and twice for no. He is frustrated, however, because sometimes his answer is other than simply “yes” or “no”. In therapy, he is introduced to a method of using the blinking eye to identify letters of the alphabet – thus he is able to spell words. This type of therapy is believed to assist in the reestablishment of speech. This dictation of sorts is a difficult process and as Bauby’s self pity deepens, he delivers a very disturbing message to his therapist.
Bauby’s therapist does not take the message very well and is pretty harsh with him. Later she apologizes for being out of line. As we travel with Bauby through this difficult time, we are presented images from not only his eye, but also his mind’s eye. From that perspective, we see him fanaticize about walking and form a visual analogy to his condition – a man is in a deep sea diver’s suit, slowly sinking towards an immobile death, alone deep at the ocean’s depths. This image very clearly gives one the extent to which Bauby feels isolated from the world.
It seems that before the stroke, Bauby contracted with a publisher to write a book and he decides that while he cannot prevent his death, he can again contribute to the world outside himself. He has his therapist contact the publisher and requests an assistant who will take his dictation for the book.
Time passes as Bauby dictates his work, visits the beach and other locations with his family, and realizes that he took so much in his life for granted. We see flashbacks that include time with his family and more notably, time with his father (played by Max von Sydow) who is also isolated in a way from the world. Suddenly there is a turn for the worst – he has developed pneumonia. As he rides in the ambulance, we see his view of the buildings passing by and what seems to be an homage as the score to The 400 Blows plays. I truly expected the film to end with the end of that score, but it did not. We cut to another scene and another familiar score that I am unable to place.
There is much more to this film than I have described. It takes its viewers on an amazing and emotional journey as Jean-Dominique Bauby triumphs over extreme adversity and communicates with the outside world again. Using great determination and drive, he delivers an amazing work of art. Julian Schnabel takes that written work and transforms it into an amazing visual work on film – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.