Diving bell
Posted on | May 24, 2008 | 5 Comments
We’re camping in for the long weekend. I stocked up on movies to watch in the evenings, we’ll fire up the BBQ later in the afternoon, and we’ll catch up on the severe sleep deficits we both seem to be suffering.
Last night we watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I knew absolutely nothing about the movie, and the back cover copy provided no hints as to what it was about. I seemed to vaguely remember hearing positive things about it, so I took a chance. It was a fascinating look at “locked-in syndrome,” the situation where a fully cognizant person becomes trapped in a functionless body. The only thing that works for the protagonist is one eyelid (the other was sewed shut to prevent it from dying completely). The title is a metaphor for his two stages of life after the stroke that disabled him at the age of 42. At first he is just trapped in a dive suit, sinking, sinking, sinking. Then he reaches a nadir and decides to stop pitying himself. He transforms, using his imagination to go on trips. He also learns to communicate through the horrifically tedious mechanism of listening to someone read out the alphabet, sorted into order of frequency, and blinking when the other person reaches the next letter. He even writes a book that way. It’s based on Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, the memoir written by French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby (former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine). It’s a powerful movie, that starts out completely from Bauby’s POV and then branches out to a 3rd person camera view after he transforms.
Also intriguing, the appearance of Max Von Sydow as his father, speaking fluent French.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
May 24th, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
That sounds like an awesome movie!
May 24th, 2008 @ 3:30 pm
It was inspiring.
May 25th, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
Wow! Mike Oldfield – thought I was the only one left who like him!
May 25th, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
He’s my favorite artist to write to. I have the complete works, including some rarities and live tracks, on my computer and I just queue ‘em up. He has a new album out called Music of the Spheres which is very orchestral.
June 10th, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
I loved “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, but the movie I’d rather see is “My Stroke of Insight”, which is the amazing bestselling book by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor. It is an incredible story and there’s a happy ending. She was a 37 year old Harvard brain scientist who had a stroke in the left half of her brain. The story is about how she fully recovered, what she learned and experienced, and it teaches a lot about how to live a better life. Her TEDTalk at TED dot com is fantastic too. It’s been spread online millions of times and you’ll see why!