The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film)


The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a 2007 French biographical drama film directed by Julian Schnabel and written by Ronald Harwood. Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's 1997 memoir of the same name, the film depicts Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. Bauby is played by Mathieu Amalric.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the César Awards, and received four Oscar nominations. Several critics later listed it as one of the best films of its decade. It ranks in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.

Plot

The first third of the film is told from the main character's, Jean-Dominique Bauby, or Jean-Do as his friends call him, first person perspective. The film opens as Bauby wakes from his three-week coma in a hospital in Berck-sur-Mer, France. After an initial rather over-optimistic analysis from one doctor, a neurologist explains that he has locked-in syndrome, an extremely rare condition in which the patient is almost completely physically paralyzed, but remains mentally normal. At first, the viewer primarily hears Bauby's "thoughts", which are inaccessible to the other characters.
A speech therapist and physical therapist try to help Bauby become as functional as possible. Bauby cannot speak, but he develops a system of communication with his speech and language therapist by blinking his left eye as she reads a list of letters to laboriously spell out his messages, letter by letter.
Gradually, the film's restricted point of view broadens out, and the viewer begins to see Bauby from "outside", in addition to experiencing incidents from his past, including a visit to Lourdes. He also fantasizes, imagining beaches, mountains, the Empress Eugénie and an erotic feast with one of his transcriptionists. It is revealed that Bauby had been editor of the popular French fashion magazine Elle, and that he had a deal to write a book. He decides that he will still write a book, using his slow and exhausting communication technique. A woman from the publishing house with which Bauby had the original book contract is brought in to take dictation.
The new book explains what it is like to now be him, trapped in his body, which he sees as being within an old-fashioned deep-sea diving suit with a brass helmet, which is called a scaphandre in French, as in the original title. Others around see his spirit, still alive, as a "Butterfly".
The story of Bauby's writing is juxtaposed with his recollections and regrets until his stroke. We see his three children, their mother, his mistress, his friends, and his father. He encounters people from his past whose lives bear similarities to his own "entrapment": a friend who was kidnapped in Beirut and held in solitary confinement for four years, and his own 92-year-old father, who is confined to his own apartment, because he is too frail to descend four flights of stairs.
Bauby eventually completes his memoir and hears the critics' responses. He dies of pneumonia ten days after its publication. The closing credits are accentuated by reversed shootings of breaking glacier ice, accompanied by the Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros song "Ramshackle Day Parade".

Cast

The film was originally to be produced by American company Universal Studios and the screenplay was originally in English, with Johnny Depp slated to star as Bauby. According to the screenwriter, Ronald Harwood, the choice of Julian Schnabel as director was recommended by Depp. Universal subsequently withdrew, and Pathé took up the project two years later. Depp dropped the project due to scheduling conflicts with . Schnabel remained as director. The film was eventually produced by Pathé and France 3 Cinéma in association with Banque Populaire Images 7 and the American Kennedy/Marshall Company and in participation with Canal+ and CinéCinéma.
According to the New York Sun, Schnabel insisted that the movie should be in French, resisting pressure by the production company to make it in English, believing that the rich language of the book would work better in the original French, and even went so far as to learn French to make the film. Harwood tells a slightly different story: Pathé wanted "to make the movie in both English and French, which is why bilingual actors were cast"; he continues that "Everyone secretly knew that two versions would be impossibly expensive", and that "Schnabel decided it should be made in French".
Schnabel said his influence for the film was drawn from personal experience:
Several key aspects of Bauby's personal life were fictionalized in the film, most notably his relationships with the mother of his children and his girlfriend. In reality, it was not Bauby's estranged wife who stayed by the patient's bedside while he lay almost inanimate on a hospital bed, it was his girlfriend of several years.

Reception

The film received universal acclaim from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 94%, based on reviews from 165 critics, with the general consensus stated as, "Breathtaking visuals and dynamic performances make The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a powerful biopic." Metacritic gave the film an average score of 92/100, based on 36 reviews.
In a 2016 poll by BBC, the film was listed as one of the top 100 films since 2000.

Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.
It was nominated for four Academy Awards, but because the film was produced by an American company, it was ineligible for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
AwardCategoryRecipientResult
Academy AwardsBest DirectorJulian Schnabel
Academy AwardsBest Adapted ScreenplayRonald Harwood
Academy AwardsBest CinematographyJanusz Kamiński
Academy AwardsBest Film EditingJuliette Welfling
BAFTA AwardsBest Film Not in the English Language
BAFTA AwardsBest Adapted ScreenplayRonald Harwood
Golden Globe AwardsBest Foreign Language Film
Golden Globe AwardsBest DirectorJulian Schnabel
Golden Globe AwardsBest ScreenplayRonald Harwood
Cannes Film FestivalBest DirectorJulian Schnabel
Cannes Film FestivalGolden PalmJulian Schnabel
Cannes Film FestivalVulcan AwardJanusz Kamiński
César AwardsBest FilmJérôme Seydoux and Julian Schnabel
César AwardsBest DirectorJulian Schnabel
César AwardsBest ActorMathieu Amalric
César AwardsBest AdaptationRonald Harwood
César AwardsBest CinematographyJanusz Kamiński
César AwardsBest EditingJuliette Welfling
César AwardsBest SoundDominique Gaborieau
National Board of ReviewBest Foreign Film
Boston Society of Film CriticsBest Film
Boston Society of Film CriticsBest Foreign Language Film
Boston Society of Film CriticsBest DirectorJulian Schnabel
Boston Society of Film CriticsBest ScreenplayRonald Harwood
Boston Society of Film CriticsBest CinematographyJanusz Kamiński
New York Film Critics OnlineBest Picture
Los Angeles Film Critics AssociationBest Film
Los Angeles Film Critics AssociationBest Foreign Language Film
Los Angeles Film Critics AssociationBest DirectorJulian Schnabel
Los Angeles Film Critics AssociationBest CinematographyJanusz Kamiński
Prix Jacques Prévert du ScénarioBest AdaptationRonald Harwood
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics AssociationBest Foreign Language Film
San Francisco Film Critics CircleBest Foreign Language Film
American Film Institute AwardsTop Ten AFI Movies of the Year
Satellite AwardsBest CinematographyJanusz Kamiński
Alliance of Women Film JournalistsBest Film
Alliance of Women Film JournalistsBest Foreign Film
Alliance of Women Film JournalistsBest DirectorJulian Schnabel
Alliance of Women Film JournalistsBest Screenplay, AdaptedRonald Harwood
Alliance of Women Film JournalistsBest EditingJuliette Welfling
Alliance of Women Film JournalistsOutstanding Achievement by a Woman in 2007Kathleen Kennedy
Toronto Film Critics AssociationBest Foreign Language Film
Belgian Film Critics AssociationGrand Prix
Directors Guild of AmericaOutstanding DirectingJulian Schnabel