A man awakens from an immeasurable sleep to find himself in a hospital room. His blurry vision slowly outlines two figures, which become a throng of people surrounding him and trying to communicate. He feels normal, if not slightly incapacitated from his slumber. But as he tries and fails to communicate with those around him and his medical state slowly becomes apparent, we discover he's anything but. "Normal," has become a thing of the past; this man's life will never be the same.
Such was the case for French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. Following a massive stroke in December 1995, the former Elle magazine editor awoke to discover he'd developed "Locked-In" syndrome, leaving him awake and entirely aware of his surroundings but deprived of motion or speech due to near complete paralysis. The only part of his body left mobile was his left eyelid. Slightly incapacitated, indeed.
But with that eyelid, Bauby devised a system of communication that allowed him to write his memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. As a transcriber read off a list of letters, Bauby would blink his eye to choose the right ones, forming words and eventually a chronicle of his life following the stroke. He wove together details of his post-stroke life, from interactions with visitors to simple procedures like bathing, with descriptions of his life before the condition, garnering critical acclaim and numerous best seller honors across Europe.
Ten years after its publication and Bauby's subsequent untimely death, director Julian Schnabel gives us a movie adaptation as beautiful and inspiring as the story and work from which it's adapted. Shot fittingly from a first-person camera perspective, the film attempts quite literally to take us inside Bauby's head following the discovery of his condition. It's a technique that makes us rethink traditional cinema, and it allows us to not merely watch the story unfold, but to live it.
It also, unfortunately, undermines an admirable performance from Frenchman Mathieu Amalric. Though his face-time may be lacking, Amalric shines as a personification of Bauby's remaining active, living qualities. Only Bauby truly knew what was going on inside his head, but thanks to Amalric's performance and a stunning script from Ronald Harwood, the movie delivers the best of both worlds. The audience gets a respectable interpretation of his life on this side of the condition, and Bauby, most importantly, gets a voice.
The voice may just be the most important part of the film, elevating it from simply a great story to an experience we'll never forget. It would have been one thing to just show Bauby's experiences following the stroke. Surely, taking a bath or being sung to would have been entirely more laborious than before, but in all of these cases, Bauby had help. Lacking most functions, he had to share these tasks with his attendants. So as important as they are to the telling of the story, the realization that they've all been lived before by people other than Bauby takes away a bit of the shine.
But nobody's ever seen inside Bauby's head before, which renders the glances inside that much more intriguing. If that renders Schnabel's efforts as quasi-novelties, so be it. Novelties they may be, but they make the film a far more emotionally-rewarding experience. It would have been hard to duplicate the anguish in the interactions between Bauby and his wife (Emmanuelle Seigner) or his father (Max von Sydow, in a touching cameo) without it. Because we know there's someone inside trying but incapable of responding to their desperate pleas, it makes the content nearly as taxing for the audience as for those involved.
Take, for example, an early interaction between Bauby and his aide, Claude (Anne Consigny). Having just devised the basis for their communication system, Bauby strings together a series of letters telling Claude "je veux mourir" - "I want to die." With us essentially inside Bauby's head, the feelings and the message start to feel like they're sprouting from our own, which ultimately lend a new appreciation of the lives and capabilities we all have.
His journey from this moment at rock-bottom to having completed his memoir becomes one from which we cannot look away. While it is a bit difficult to relate to Bauby in his "Locked-In" state, the frequent trips back to his normal past life tie our insides in knots. They remind us that such ailments can happen to anyone, encouraging us on a deeper level to live our lives to the fullest. Bauby may not have before his stroke, but this documentation of his perseverances after show us that he certainly did in later life.
4 stars out of 4
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