The movie that I am going to review is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. When I first heard the title of the movie and I heard the movie was going to be in French, I was pretty skeptical about watching it but I would soon be proved wrong. I absolutely enjoyed the Diving bell and the Butterfly and I am going to state the various reasons why I thought so.
The movie is about the experiences and tribulations of Jean-Dominique Bauby before and after a massive stroke that left him paralyzed from head to toe. He gives us his ideas and views on life as he lives with this condition he has called locked in syndrome. The only thing he can control is his left eye and eyelid which he uses to communicate. He ends up compose a book this way which I think is completely amazing. They reveal little things about his past as the movie goes on and people in his life that are important to him. Ten days after the publication of his book he dies of Pneumonia. I really liked the way the movie wasn’t softened and sugarcoated. Movies like this are usually used to aim for box office status or for those who want to have a good cry for the fact of just feeling like crying.
An aspect I liked about the movie was that for a long part of the movie, we could see through his point of view. They gave us the full scope of empathy in which to partake in seeing what he was going through. The opening of the movie was brilliant as it started with the opening of his eyes. We get to see his eye get sewn shut also from his point of view which was cinematically brilliant. I also like how they slowly transitioned from his point of view to the audience looking at him.
I think the strongest reason I liked this movie was the cinematical representation of Jean-Do’s imagination. I loved the butterfly as a symbol of his imagination because after the accident, his imagination bloomed from his previous closed cocoon view of life. The butterfly is free to fly anywhere and that is exactly what his did. I loved the part where he says the only two things that aren’t paralyzed are his imagination and memories and immediately we are given a flood of different scenes used with different kinds of film! AMAZING! One of the best scenes was the scene where they show his tube pertaining to the fact that he can’t eat. He crushes everyone’s sadness by stating that he can actually eat anything he wants and they show him devouring an amazing looking seafood dinner. The cinematography of his imagination was beautiful. I will talk about it later though.
The acting I felt was completely superb. The emotion portrayed through jean-do’s voice when he talks about the sadness he feels when his children come visit him, the emotions his father feels when he calls Jean-do in the hospital was so intense and real that I nearly cried (were in the safety nest so this stays here!). I would never cry at a silly movie like the notebook so it tells you how moved I was at their pain. These kinds of situations where people are suffering are really hard to watch sometimes and I liked how the movie portrayed his stress and pain without sugarcoating it at all.
What a movie! Ten out of ten
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