Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (2007)

Directed by Julian Schnabel. Starring Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Olatz López Garmendia, Max Von Sydow, Isaach de Bankolé, Patrick Chesnais, Agathe de La Fontaine, Niels Arestrup. [PG-13]

Bold, exhausting portrait of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Amalric), the editor of a high-profile French fashion magazine, who suffers a massive stroke that results in “locked-in syndrome,” where he’s trapped inside his own mind, unable to move or communicate except for his left eyelid, which he uses to not only answer yes-and-no questions, but also dictate the prose for a novel, one blink at a time. Schnabel is not content to allow the camera be a passive observer of Bauby’s trials—for the first third of the movie, everything is shot in POV format, and even after that, color, blurred focus, movement, transitions, and perspective are always at the service of reflecting mood and thought (director of photography Janusz Kaminski and editor Juliette Welfling both earned Oscar nods for their work). As in My Left Foot, the protagonist is not treated as some sort of noble saint, but rather a flawed person with ever-human foibles and tempers; the last thing that the sardonic narrator would ever want this story to be considered is “inspirational.” The unforgettable scene of Bauby and his father (Von Sydow) speaking on the phone is truly heart-rending. Known in the US as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly despite the fact that “scaphandre” actually translates to “spacesuit” or “diving suit,” not “diving bell.”

87/100