The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

Looking Out from a Locked-In Mind
Julian Schnabel, well accepted as one of the important visual artists of our time, continues to impress with his small but elite group of films, proving that paintings and cinema are closely related as a means to reach the psyche. In 'Le Scaphandre et le papillon' ('The Diving Bell and the Butterfly') he has transformed the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby (with the sensitive screen adaptation by Ronald Harwood) into an experience for the mind and the heart. It is an extraordinary blend of visual effects, poetry, exquisite acting, and the perseverance of the human mind to communicate with the world when all seeming variations of communication are stripped away.

Jean-Dominique (Jean-Do) Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was the editor of the French magazine 'Elle', living with the beautiful Céline Desmoulins (Emmanuelle Seigner) and their three children, when during a ride with his son he has a massive stroke that leaves him completely paralyzed (the 'locked-in syndrome')...

Let the butterfly fly
On December 8, 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, known as Jean-Do to his intimates, age forty-three, editor-in-chief of the world-famous fashion magazine, Elle, was living the "good life" to the extreme when he became the victim of a devastating cerebro-vascular accident that left him in a state of total paralysis, incapable of any verbal communication, in what is known in the medical community as "locked-in syndrome." His mental faculties totally intact as he laid motionless in his hospital bed, Bauby learned to communicate with the outside world using his left eyelid, the only part of his body over which he still had any control. During the next fourteen months, using a communication code developed by his therapist and his publisher's assistant, who transcribed this code, Bauby was able to compose, letter by letter, a lyrical and heartbreaking memoir of his life struggle, "Le Scaphandrier et le papillon." Bauby died in 1997, two days after its publication.

From Bauby's...

The beauties of life...written at a few words per minute
"Locked-in Syndrome", a fate worse than death afflicts Jean-Dominique Bauby in this true story of the final chapter of the remarkable life of the Elle editor and famous Parisian. With a healthy mind and a useless body, Bauby experiences the horror of only being able to communicate with the outside world by closing one functioning eyelid. Adding to his torturous existence is that Bauby's mind was meant to be shared with the world. As an author, editor and shining member of the intellectual elite, Bauby dazzled those who came in contact with him. When his body died, his great thoughts did not go away. He could not turn off his creativity, his dreams, his desires or his memories...he just had no way to share them.

The first half of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" details the opening months of that living hell. One could not think of a worse existence than being in a hospital room with a TV turned to an off-air station during the overnight hours when it blares an...

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