The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The editor of "Elle" magazine has a stroke and suffers from locked-in syndrome; he can only blink one eye. It's like the fantabulous "Johnny Got His Gun," but without the anti-war message. The first part of the film is seen from the main character's perspective and is very creatively filmed: the director shows the effects of light and tears on the vision and how restricted his world has become. "The Diving Bell" also has a great cast, especially Mathieu Amalric as the main character and Marie-Josée Croze as his speech therapist. The film is much better than director Julian Schnabel's other work, like "Before Night Falls." This is an accomplished and fully realized work of art.

But it wouldn't be one of my blog entries without me sharing some quibbles. As the movie goes on, we see some flashback scenes from the guy's life, but the scenes suffer from the same fatal flaw as in "The Passion of the Christ." They don't illuminate anything about the character and seem out of place. If you recall, "The Passion" was one man being tortured to death, with some scenes from his past. A decent director might have used these scenes to show why this man was being tortured; Gibson used the scenes to show Christ telling his followers things like, "This cracker is my body; eat of me." The film gives you absolutely no reason to feel sympathy for the main character because you don't know why people love or hate him so much. So long story short, the scenes from his past could have been better. And granted, the main character in "The Diving Bell" can only blink one eye, but at the end of the film you still don't know that much about him.