Cast: Mathieu Almaric

Director: Julian Schnabel

Screenplay: Ronald Hardwood

Running time: 1 hr 52 mins

Genre: Drama/Biopic



CRITIQUE:


Life-affirming dramas are painless to predict. They usually end rather, well, life-affirming. Usually they consist of main characters battling through the craps of life, then they sweep you with overflowing emotions and close to a finale that will reduce you to blowing noses into tissues. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY is not that melodrama. More importantly, this is thankfully a French film, for if it would have been Hollywood, it could have been clichéd.


Here, the story is told through a first person point-of-view, and by that, excellent Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography, pensive and gorgeous, takes us into the eyes of Jean Dominique-Bauby (a performance by Mathieu Almaric that is worth to note), a patient of a “locked-in” syndrome. This illness is an after-effect of a massive stroke, which paralyses the entire body, and luckily enough, spared his eyelids, sight and imagination.


This is where the film truly delivers. It does not sweep you with too much melodrama. Bauby is a dodgy persona to like: a womanizer, a father that barely cares for his children and an easy-going life-waster. But in this tragedy, it’s a meditation on how much we waste in our lives. Bauby goes through a soul-searching experience and discovers what it really means to be alive, as he made use of a blinking eye and his wandering imagination to write a memoir.



VERDICT:

A rather poignant film about the meaning of life, the importance of imagination, and the benefits of the human spirit told in a meditative, impressive filmmaking.



RATING: A-