The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is not an easy movie to sit through, but it is the most beautiful you’ll experience in 2007. If you don’t feel this way, then I imagine you’re not human. You probably have engine oil for blood and, in that case, you should not be reading my review of director Julian Schnabel's movie and should instead be reading something like Popular Mechanics. Movies are for people, silly robot.

As for my human brethren, The Diving Bell is…well, it’s hard to say what it is. It’s unlike just about any other movie you’ve ever seen, if only because it’s told almost entirely through the point of view of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the editor of Elle France who, at 43 years old, suffered a stroke that left his entire body, except for his left eye, entirely paralyzed. We begin here, in fact, confused, terrified, as Bauby regains some command of his mental faculties after the stroke, only to realize he’s trapped in his own body. He’s a working brain in a dead body, in other words. This point is driven home when Bauby has to watch as doctors sew shut his right eye, a trick Schnabel pulled off by actually adhering latex to the lens of the camera and then working a needle and thread through it.

Eventually, Bauby is taught a means of communication that involves a translator of sorts; Henriette (Marie-Josée Croze) reads through the alphabet and, whenever she comes to the next letter in the word he wishes to express, he blinks. This is like communicating via Morse code, but the technique works and slowly Bauby is able to beg for death. That pisses Henriette off, especially since she, as well as other hospital staff, have gone to such lengths to help in his rehabilitation. Bauby finally resigns himself to his fate, if one can call his torture a fate, and decides upon something to look forward to – the completion of a novel he had been commissioned to write.

That’s where Claude (Anne Consigny) comes in; the publishing company sends her to transcribe Bauby’s blinks into words. Every night, he goes to sleep planning what he’s going to “write,” memorizes it, and then, come morning, shares it with Claude one letter at a time. As Bauby becomes increasingly willing to reengage the world, especially through his time with Claude, the camera pulls back and our perception, like Bauby’s, expands. The irony is, Bauby’s confinement ultimately proves to me the most liberating event of his life. He blossoms under these circumstances, becoming a better man than he ever was before. Especially to his estranged wife, Céline (Emmanuelle Seigner); it’s not his lover who sits with him as he recovers, it’s Céline and, eventually, their children. Schnabel refuses to employ manipulative melodrama to express any of this, instead opting to let small gestures, like a son touching his father’s neck, say everything Bauby’s lips cannot.

Schabel won the Best Director award at Cannes for this American production shot authentically in French, a language Schnabel had to reacquaint himself with during filming. He’ll likely earn himself a Best Director nod from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for his brilliant work, while nobody should be surprised if Max Von Sydow, who has a bit part as Bauby’s aging father, finds himself a nominee come March. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about perception, of ourselves, of others, of the world; it’s about discovering the limits of reality and the breadth of imagination; it’s about finding courage in ourselves, and about how courage has the power to inspire. In other, it’s beautiful…unless, of course, you’re a robot.

Grade: A

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