Having helmed biopics of Reinaldo Arenas and Jean Michel Basquiat, we’d come to understand that Julian Schnabel was only in it for the art. Well, he’s only gone and made a proper film. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is an exquisite adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s bestselling memoir. M. Bauby, you may recall, was the gadabout womanizing editor of Elle magazine when a stroke left him completely paralysed with ‘locked in’ syndrome. Left with the use of only one eye, over fourteen months, Bauby dictated his book by blinking one letter at a time.
Schnabel, a fellow sensualist, allows the camera to roam freely to mirror his protagonist’s mind’s eye. This is a world of beautiful women and oysters and the theme from The 400 Blows. It is densely populated despite the terrifyingly isolated first-person perspective. Bustling about are the speech therapist (Marie-Josée Croze), the wife (Emmanuelle Seigner), the amanuensis (Anne Consigny), the frail father (Max von Sydow, heartbreaking), the gorgeous children.
Many filmmakers would be happy enough with the worthiness of the material but Schnabel and Spielberg’s regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski do astonishing work here. One is often reminded of Polanski by the stark image of the world reflected in one eye but every conceivable cinematic style is squeezed in, altered and subverted.
It really is something to see.