Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Chris W

  
  Based on his memoirs of the same name, this is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the one-time editor of Elle Magazine who, after a debilitating stroke, became the victim of Locked-In Syndrome- a condition where he was unable to speak, and the only parts of him that worked were his… More
  Based on his memoirs of the same name, this is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the one-time editor of Elle Magazine who, after a debilitating stroke, became the victim of Locked-In Syndrome- a condition where he was unable to speak, and the only parts of him that worked were his mind and his left eye. To communicate he was forced to slowly and painstakingly blink as people read off the letters that he wanted to use to form sentences. It sounds very tedious and awful, but he manged to write his memoirs using that method, so that is definitely a testament to thew strength of determination and will power. This is a depressing film, but it's not nearly as depressign as I figured it would be. I think it's actually a lot more beautiful and filled with hope and enlightenment, so that takes the edge off. That, and the superb way the story is told gives you more to think about, letting you focus more on how they did it instead of the tragedy of the situation. Schnabel and Janusz Kaminski (the dp) do an excellent job of telling the story, mostly by showing it from Bauby's POV. This is done with unique camera placements, double exposures, and all sorts of cool lenses and other effects. From visual and technical perspectives, this is a real masterpiece. The audience gets to experience things from how Bauby did, and, while it is harrowing it times, you really gain a ton of respect for the man. Besides all the neat techniques, this is still a wonderful piece of work. It's got wonderful cinematography overall (not just he POV stuff), a great story, and some terrific performances, espeically Amalric. This is one of those cases where the fiulm is so dependent on the lead role to carry things that, if he fails, the film fails. Thankfully, Amalric knocks it out of the park. It's a shame he got snubbed at some awards ceremonies though, because he has one of the most challenging and unglamoruous roles here. He was very brave to take this one on, and I have really come to love him as an actor as a result. Give this film a shot. Yeah, it's kinda bleak, and arty, and a bit pretentious, but it really is touching, inspiring, and one hell of a cinematic achievement.

• Matthew S

  
  Through brilliant use of the medium, we are given an acutely visceral impression of being inside the useless body of Jean-Dominic Bauby, all of us sharing in his extraordinary and limited experience, and learning of his poetry, imagination, and passion for all of life. We are also… More
  Through brilliant use of the medium, we are given an acutely visceral impression of being inside the useless body of Jean-Dominic Bauby, all of us sharing in his extraordinary and limited experience, and learning of his poetry, imagination, and passion for all of life. We are also begged the question of how much we would sacrifice for someone we knew in his position. P.S. This is not a French film. It's American (two Tom Waits songs!), but authentic to its non-fictional subject, a French man in a France.

• paul o

  
  Cinematography in this film was beautiful and different. The story was rich and deep. Its truly a masterpiece!

• Jan Marc M

  
  The Diving Bell And The Butterfly is a true narrative on and of French author, journalist, editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who wrote a book of same title with his left eye. A triumph of the persevering human spirit over a seemingly impossible challenge. A convincing offering of a… More
  The Diving Bell And The Butterfly is a true narrative on and of French author, journalist, editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who wrote a book of same title with his left eye. A triumph of the persevering human spirit over a seemingly impossible challenge. A convincing offering of a perspective through brilliance in cinematography and direction. Life-affirming. Life-changing. Accomplished.

• Jim H

  
  The former editor of <i>Elle</i> suffers from locked-in syndrome. I think the best word to describe this film is maudlin. I can understand people who may be moved by this story, a French <i>My Left Foot</i>, but by the end of the film, I didn't feel as… More
  The former editor of <i>Elle</i> suffers from locked-in syndrome. I think the best word to describe this film is maudlin. I can understand people who may be moved by this story, a French <i>My Left Foot</i>, but by the end of the film, I didn't feel as though I had learned anything. As much as the film uses POV shots and its lack of linearity reflects Jean Do's stroke-affected thoughts, I still didn't know him as a person or what allowed him to continue despite his impediments. What's the take-home? What's the theme? Is this merely another story about an afflicted man taking what life shells out like a champ? Overall, there are moments during <i>The Diving Bell and the Butterfly</i> when I thought about how shitty it would be to be in Jean Do's state, and this opportunity self-reflection and the way locked-in syndrome was presented are the best things about the film; however, the filmmakers failed to do the one thing we ask of them when we pay our ten bucks: "Tell me a coherent fucking story."

• Cynthia S

  
  This is an interesting documentary-style French film. However, I did not find it to be as inspiring, or moving, as many of the other people. Maybe it's just my lack of appreciation for French films? I find most of them terribly slow..to the point of excrutiating. This one we can… More
  This is an interesting documentary-style French film. However, I did not find it to be as inspiring, or moving, as many of the other people. Maybe it's just my lack of appreciation for French films? I find most of them terribly slow..to the point of excrutiating. This one we can just add to that list, I guess.

• Jennifer X

  
  Only the French can pull this off. Schnabel turns what could be a potentially boring subject into a magnetic, lyrical splendor. The climax was perfect, the acting was heartfelt, and the music fits like a glove. Never does it turn into arty nonsense or meaningless froth.… More
  Only the French can pull this off. Schnabel turns what could be a potentially boring subject into a magnetic, lyrical splendor. The climax was perfect, the acting was heartfelt, and the music fits like a glove. Never does it turn into arty nonsense or meaningless froth. <br/><br/>And I have changed my mind about cinematography: Atonement, you no longer hold the position of the most beautiful movie in the world, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon has surpassed you by miles. At the end scene when the eye looks at things sideways, roaming all around, and then all of a sudden the camera flips right side up, I thought I would cry from the gorgeousness. It's not a pretentious kind of beauty, it's as if you had just perchanced upon the moment and happened to capture it at exactly the right time at the right angle, and somehow this discovery happened a thousand times over. My gosh, if only Schnabel and his band of artistic geniuses could get together and turn MY life into something this fantastic.

• ♥Robyn

  
  On December 9, 1995, Jean Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle magazine, suffered a massive stroke which left him with "locked in syndrome"... and the only thing he can move is his left eyelid. a speech therapist, (Marie Josee Croze) teaches him a laborious form of… More
  On December 9, 1995, Jean Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle magazine, suffered a massive stroke which left him with "locked in syndrome"... and the only thing he can move is his left eyelid. a speech therapist, (Marie Josee Croze) teaches him a laborious form of communication, and with this he is able to dictate his memoirs. This really is an astonishing true life story ,about a man who held the world in his palm and lost everything to sudden paralysis at just 43 years old, and he somehow found the strength to rebound. interesting to note that Julian Schnabel won Golden Globe for Best Director with this movie,im not surprised at all~!

• Fernando Rafael Q

  
  A gripping tale of a man's terrible illness, Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon, is a beautifully photgraphed and very well-written piece of art. Julian Schnabel makes this film work in a fantastic way, and definitely lets you become 'Jean-Do' with his great style and vision.… More
  A gripping tale of a man's terrible illness, Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon, is a beautifully photgraphed and very well-written piece of art. Julian Schnabel makes this film work in a fantastic way, and definitely lets you become 'Jean-Do' with his great style and vision. This film explores (and causes) a wide array of emotions, especially in the scenes with Jean-Do and his father or with his ex-lover, Céline. The relatively unknown cast was great: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Anne Consigny, Marie-Josée Croze, Olatz López Garmendia, and Max Von Sydow. The scene where they sew Jean-Dominique's eye shut is fantastic.

• Emile T

  
  This won't really be a review because I feel like I can't describe how much I loved this movie. Everyone will find something to love in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, that remains one of the most touching movies I've seen, even though the fabulous director… More
  This won't really be a review because I feel like I can't describe how much I loved this movie. Everyone will find something to love in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, that remains one of the most touching movies I've seen, even though the fabulous director prefered to say: Life is worth living, instead of giving up. Ovation to Mathieu Amalric, who made me feel his pain, his happiness. And I cannot not mention one of the best direction of the year, by Julian Schnabel, who made the impossible come true. Everyone, run see this !

• Daniel M

  
  Given that it is common practice to praise a filmmaker by describing them as an artist, one could assume that all artists would make great filmmakers. In fact this is very rarely the case, with many artists who dabble in the medium producing works which are closer to installations… More
  Given that it is common practice to praise a filmmaker by describing them as an artist, one could assume that all artists would make great filmmakers. In fact this is very rarely the case, with many artists who dabble in the medium producing works which are closer to installations than actual films. Sometimes the works are so personal that they collapse into narcissism; other times, as with the work of Douglas Gordon, they display such overt contempt for the medium that no sane person would sit through them. In his first two films, Basquiat and Before Night Falls, Julian Schnabel fell into the first of these two traps. Both were billed as biographical tributes to artists whom Schnabel admired, but the former especially quickly morphed into a self-serving promotion of his own art and experiences, to the point at which the central character was completely marginalised. But with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Schnabel has overcome this considerable hurdle to produce an awe-inspiring film which truly makes us appreciate every living moment we have. Much film scholarship has been devoted to the director's relationship to the subject of their films, and to whether it is a good thing to put such a strongly personal or autobiographical stamp on one's work. Schnabel said that he was drawn to the project having cared for his elderly father in the last years of his life, drawing inspiration from the life of Jean-Dominique Bauby which resonated with his own circumstances. He has expressed this by making a vivid first-person account of what initially seems like a tragedy, but with the focus very much on the characters rather than the puppeteer pulling the strings. This is evident from the opening shot, where we see the outside world as if we are inside Jean-Do's head. Although this shooting approach has been used before (most notably in Being John Malkovich), this time the focus is less on what we see as how we see it. Schnabel and his cinematographer Janusz Kami&#324;ski used 'tilt-and-swing' lenses, in which only a small part of the frame is ever in focus and this part can be easily manoeuvred to match the movements of an eyeball. This simple creative decision goes some way in establishing both the disorientation of the central character and the immediate claustrophobia that comes from observing his condition. For the first twenty minutes of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, we feel like we are trapped inside someone else's body, like John Cusack at the end of Being John Malkovich. Before any of the fantasy sequences or the flashbacks to his life leading up to the stroke, we are forced to confront the bleak and depressing scenario of a man whose body has genuinely become a prison. When the doctors sew up his right eye to stop it becoming infected, we see everything so up close that we squirm and flinch, desperate to look away while knowing full well that he can't. Because the sense of claustrophobia created is so real and so intense, we begin to understand and share in the character's despair. Our limited perspective matches his own, so that we experience the same frustrations, from the trial-and-error of blinking out sentences to the feeling of blind panic as more information comes to light. When his speech therapist misunderstands Jean-Do, thinking he has said he wants to die and storming out of the room, we feel genuinely helpless. Schnabel puts us so close to the experience that we are forced to abandon all our misgivings and hope that there are better things in store. Thankfully, we do not spend the entire film as trapped observers. The title of the film summarises the contradiction between body and spirit which is central to Jean-Do's predicament. His body is a diving-bell (or in this case an old-fashioned diver's suit), which is cumbersome and through which one can only observe rather than influence the world around them. His spirit, on the other hand, is a butterfly, emerging from the grim exterior of the cocoon as something fragile yet beautiful, and most of all free. As the film moves on, our perspective broadens out at the same rate as the central character. We begin to see flashbacks of Jean-Do's previous life, from his presence at a photo shoot for the cover of Elle to a sequence of him sharing oysters with a girlfriend. These scenes, coupled with the character's soul-searching internal monologues, depict a life which, while wealthy and affluent, was not rewarding or fulfilling in any way. Mathieu Amalric, best known as the villain in Quantum of Solace, gives a beautifully layered performance, walking through these scenes with a sense of existential frustration even when his life seems most exciting. The strength of the film's initial section means that when our vision broadens out, it doesn't simply collapse into yet another triumph-of-the-human-spirit-over-adversity story. For starters, we don't have to put up with our central character spouting off a lot of cheesy speeches about overcoming adversity. Then there is the personality of the characters and the extent of their physical transformation; you don't get the sense of people pretending to be ill so they can still look cool in the bar afterwards. Finally, there is the ending, which although it contains elements of triumph is also profoundly melancholic. We still leave on a hopeful note, but the film makes no attempt to sanitise or compromise its story for fear of undermining said optimism. If the film has a message beyond its appraisal for life and love, it is to do with the difficulty of communication and the process of dealing with regret. One of the best scenes come when Jean-Do's father, played by the ever-reliable Max von Sydow, calls his son and breaks down over the phone, out of sorrow, frustration with his fading memory and anger that both are physically incapable of helping each other. Ronald Harwood's script is rich with these kinds of pathos-ridden exchanges which at their best are reminiscent of Samuel Beckett. The fantasy elements of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly represent both the film's greatest strength and its first of two problems. The images Schnabel conjures up are ravishingly beautiful, with scenes from Jean-Do's past intersecting and criss-crossing at the same breakneck speed as Joel's memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But there are occasions when we linger too long in the imagination, when what is really interesting is the day-to-day physical struggle of the central character. Similarly, the film shifts rather uneasily from one central relationship to another. In the opening section we see Jean-Do's speech therapist (a great performance from Marie-Josée Croze) teaching him slowly and painfully how to communicate. We develop a great affection for her character, so that when the film moves to focus on Jean-Do's partner and children, we are frustrated and disappointed that we don't see more of her. Schnabel deliberately shot the film in the same hospital and ward in which the real life Jean-Do was treated, which makes it all the more unusual - if not slightly ungrateful - for the staff to become marginalised as things progress. In the end, however, these little problems are easily forgivable. For The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is that rarest of things - a film about the triumph of the human spirit which is genuinely uplifting and emotionally gripping. Unlike Rob Reiner's The Bucket List, it doesn't approach death or illness with stultifying schmaltz, and it really does make you value your life, health and well-being. While not quite a perfect film, it is by far and away Schnabel's best work, with enough vivid imagery and emotional heartache to stay with you for years.

• Sajin P

  
  Had a lot of expectations for this movie, having been touted as one of the most inspirational films of recent times. The life of main character is indeed an inspiration to everyone, but the movie was very dragging and lifeless throughout. It really tested my patience to get through… More
  Had a lot of expectations for this movie, having been touted as one of the most inspirational films of recent times. The life of main character is indeed an inspiration to everyone, but the movie was very dragging and lifeless throughout. It really tested my patience to get through to the end of this movie, and in the end I was left not feeling particularly uplifted or motivated by the experience.

• Dean M

  
  Interesting true story to see what director Julian Schnabel has done the seeming impossible... turned Jean-Dominique Bauby's painstaking memoir of living with "locked-in syndrome" into a screen experience worthy of its rare subject matter. Allowing us to see through… More
  Interesting true story to see what director Julian Schnabel has done the seeming impossible... turned Jean-Dominique Bauby's painstaking memoir of living with "locked-in syndrome" into a screen experience worthy of its rare subject matter. Allowing us to see through Bauby's only port of control - his left eye - isn't just a stylistic tic, and the enhanced 1080p transfer mercifully upholds the unfocused imagery so crucial to Bauby's palpable worldview.

• Randy T

  
  I have a soft spot for inspirational true stories, especially ones with meaningful dialog between fathers and sons. A terrific story of reflection, regret and reconciliation.

• Anthony L

  
  The diving bell and the butterfly is one of my favourite books so I was really concerned when I heard that they were making it into a film. My concerns soon disappeared within the first few minutes, the brilliant use of first person camera really set the scene and tone and gave an… More
  The diving bell and the butterfly is one of my favourite books so I was really concerned when I heard that they were making it into a film. My concerns soon disappeared within the first few minutes, the brilliant use of first person camera really set the scene and tone and gave an insight to what it was like, albeit visually but that was Schnabel has done. It?s not really a book that can be adapted in the classic way, this film needed much more care and that?s exactly what it received. An extraordinary book, visualised into an extraordinary film. This film has jumped straight into my top 10 favourite films of all time. Read the book first though!!

• Curtis L

  
  Fascinating story that makes you want to go do stuff before all you can move is your eyelid. It was hard to look at his creepy broken vein eyeball, but well worth it.

• Rubia Carolina .

  
  An intriguing, (visually) beautiful and amazing film. Simply breathtaking!!!! <br> <br>

• Derek D

  
  Surprisingly excellent film about a man who suffers a sudden stroke and decides, during rehabilitation to "write" a book about his life with the help of his speech therapist. All this despite being paralyzed, mute and blind in one eye. It goes back-and-forth between his… More
  Surprisingly excellent film about a man who suffers a sudden stroke and decides, during rehabilitation to "write" a book about his life with the help of his speech therapist. All this despite being paralyzed, mute and blind in one eye. It goes back-and-forth between his rehab and his own life and the best parts of this movie are his thoughts about what's going on. Fucking hysterical.

• Sanjaya &

  
  Well, now I know why Julian Schnabel won Golden Globe for Best Director with this movie, because I think that this movie really deserved it!! Julian Schnabel makes a great directing vision by placing the camera just as Jean-Do eyes, that's amazing... The story itself wasn't… More
  Well, now I know why Julian Schnabel won Golden Globe for Best Director with this movie, because I think that this movie really deserved it!! Julian Schnabel makes a great directing vision by placing the camera just as Jean-Do eyes, that's amazing... The story itself wasn't boring when the therapist try to translate what Jean-Do wants to say, but I'm even laughed because of Schnabel great directing style... Too disappointing that he lost to The Coen Brothers in Best Director category, because I think that he is the one who deserved an Oscar... Two thumbs up for him and this movie!!!

• Alexander W

  
  This films story and production must have been done before in Europe and for that its nothing new or riveting its still a jaw opener and worth while film to spend your time and watch when there is little else to do.

Read all 20 featured audience ratings