The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
by Catherine Lee

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a wonderful-sounding title, with a gentle lilt and more than a hint of mystery, but once you understand its meaning it becomes a heartbreaking and horribly apt title. Based on the memoir of Jean Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the strange story of life after a devastating stroke. The subject matter is far from the usual fodder for a major motion picture with a happily-ever-after ending, but this beautiful and fascinating film is compelling. It is an aching, passionate admonishment to live life. 

Bauby was only 43 when he suffered the stroke that left him completely paralyzed except for the ability to blink one eye. Bauby’s devastating stroke left him little physical ability but with all of his mental acuity in tact. This very rare condition is known as “locked-in syndrome.” He’s himself in his mind, but he cannot speak or move. 

His description of this horrible disconnect is the title of the film. He describes his body as the “diving bell,” the name given to the old diving suits used by the first underwater explorers. Several times during the film we see a diving-suited figure suspended underwater, unable to move and with only the sound of his own breathing as company. The sense of paralysis and removal from the world is perfectly captured. 

The butterfly of the title refers to the life of the mind and the imagination that allow  Bauby some measure of sanity and humanity. Even after the stroke, Bauby is a vibrant thinker, full of dreams, memory, passion, frustration and selfishness. He’s still oh so human. 

Before the stroke, Bauby had a complicated life. He was the editor of French Elle. You don’t become a fashion magazine editor without a good eye, plenty of ambition and the ability and desire to socialize and charm. His life wasn’t simple at work, and at home he had a beautiful wife and children. He also had a girlfriend with whom he was quite smitten. His wife knew what was happening when he disappeared and was less than thrilled about it. 

How do we know all of this? From his own telling of the tale. With the help of observant doctors, therapists and nurses, Bauby is assigned a speech therapist, played with a gentle voice and a presence that conveys a spectacular reserve of patience and compassion by Marie-Josee Croze. She arranges the letters of the alphabet in the order of most frequent use. Bauby blinks at the correct letter. Through this system he at first can communicate with doctors, family and visitors. Eventually he dictates his memoir using this system. 

The patience this requires is fierce. We see only snippets of this, but the kindness necessary to pursue this communication is easily conveyed. A person sitting in a chair slowly saying a jumbled alphabet and watching for a blink. The “how” of the memoir dictation is amazing as is the “how” of translating the memoir to the screen. 

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has been nominated for four Academy Awards, and all the nominations are testimony to how inventive the screen translation is. The film begins from the perspective of a sensibility awakening to consciousness. The images are murky. Light and shapes flit across the screen. Faces come in and out of focus. Voices change coming in and out of focus. But at the center of the muffling is the voice-over of a being saying, in effect, “Listen to me!” One early heartbreak of the movie is the growing awareness of Bauby coming to understand that his inner life no longer matches his outer self. 

Ron Harwood has been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for his adaptation of Bauby’s memoir. I don’t know the source material. I suspect it is as unsentimental as the screenplay, but it is a credit to the screenwriter and the director for not letting sentimentality overwhelm the movie. 

Director Julian Schnabel’s life as an artist and painter is central to the success of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Not only does he find a satisfying balance of visual elements (especially between the life of Bauby from his stroke-stricken state to the memories of his life before the stroke to his imaginative flights of fancy), his commitment to not sentimentalizing Bauby’s life is essential. 

Schnabel has directed two other films about artists, Basquiat, about a visual artist, and Before Night Falls, about a poet. Both films are wonderful. Both take as their subjects contemporaries of Schnabel. With The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Schnabel has made his third adventure as director, as they say, the charm. His affinity with artists makes him the ideal translator of this subject. He knows we don’t need to love the artist. He knows we need to love the art. 

Bauby is not a sterling character. I’ve spoken to no woman who doesn’t think the guy is a weasel. It must have been tempting to soften the weasel aspects of his personality. There is a particular scene that makes Bauby’s suffering pale in comparison to that of his wife’s compassion for her husband. Emmanuelle Seigner plays her role as Bauby’s wife with fire and sympathy. 

Schnabel doesn’t soften Bauby. He doesn’t pass judgment. He just shows us the complexity and the ambiguity. “Locked-in syndrome” is a horrible torture. Even so, the care and attention of those who care for him allow Bauby to express his humanity and his experience in a way that is honest and miraculous. How lucky he is in that respect. And how lucky he is that his great work of art, the accounting of his life, should be championed by those who understand. 

The effect of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly may be only a very elevated step up from what I call “The Jerry Springer effect.” You know what I mean: You see an episode of “Jerry Springer” and you say, “Thank God I’m not that selfish and oblivious!” But it is a very different effect to see someone who is both attractive and unattractive and suffer something so awful and be so honest about himself that we can only marvel at the miraculous diversity of human behavior.

Catherine Lee is the executive director of Fort Wayne Cinema Center, the only independently operated movie theater in Fort Wayne, specializing in independent, foreign, documentary, specialty and classic films.

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