Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon
I've often had nightmares of being sentenced to prison for the rest of my life, for a crime I hardly remember most of the time. It'd begin with me trying to run away from the police, then the solemn trials, the stern faces of the judge and the jury, followed by the rough guards throwing me into my prison cell and the sound of the thick metal gate closing in behind me, leaving the only source of light streaming in from the barred windows. That is the worst nightmare, the type of dream that reminds you of how horrible it'd be to be imprisoned for the rest of your life in a place you can never get out of no matter how hard you try. I'd usually wake up with cold sweat all over, kicking the blanket off my body, let the cold chilly air of the morning to wake me up fully, to remind me that that was merely a dream - nothing more. But it still remains as a lingering thought in my mind at times, the thought of being trapped forever in darkness. Now, imagine yourself as a successful man in life, thrown away into a prison without committing any crimes against the law, whatsoever. Imagine not being able to move in this prison, not being able to talk, or to communicate. That's the kind of prison Jean-Dominique Bauby stayed in for two years inside his body after suffering from a stroke that paralyzed his body, save for his left eyelid. Now, imagine it as a true story that happened to someone, and not just a character of a film or book. That's Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon, that's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
I've often had nightmares of being sentenced to prison for the rest of my life, for a crime I hardly remember most of the time. It'd begin with me trying to run away from the police, then the solemn trials, the stern faces of the judge and the jury, followed by the rough guards throwing me into my prison cell and the sound of the thick metal gate closing in behind me, leaving the only source of light streaming in from the barred windows. That is the worst nightmare, the type of dream that reminds you of how horrible it'd be to be imprisoned for the rest of your life in a place you can never get out of no matter how hard you try. I'd usually wake up with cold sweat all over, kicking the blanket off my body, let the cold chilly air of the morning to wake me up fully, to remind me that that was merely a dream - nothing more. But it still remains as a lingering thought in my mind at times, the thought of being trapped forever in darkness. Now, imagine yourself as a successful man in life, thrown away into a prison without committing any crimes against the law, whatsoever. Imagine not being able to move in this prison, not being able to talk, or to communicate. That's the kind of prison Jean-Dominique Bauby stayed in for two years inside his body after suffering from a stroke that paralyzed his body, save for his left eyelid. Now, imagine it as a true story that happened to someone, and not just a character of a film or book. That's Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon, that's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly begins with Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathiew Amalric), the editor of Elle magazine, waking up in a hospital bed and completely disorientated. Doctors surrounded him from all directions, telling him to calm down and asked him a dozen questions he could hardly answer. He tried to answer some of the questions, but the doctors just kept asking the same questions until he realized one thing: he lost the ability to speak. A stroke that struck him paralyzed his whole body, causing him to be able to communicate only through the blinking patterns in his left eye, and his family and friends were completely devastated by the accident. The story tells of how Jean-Do, beaten down by a condition he cannot possibly live a normal life with, fought with his inner-demons and presented to the world with the ultimate display of human spirit, the desperate urge to live life despite the odds. This film is based on the book with the same name, that was written by Jean-Do himself as he laid there in the hospital bed. How is that even possible, you ask? That's the power of determination, and that everlasting drive to stay alive.
A similar story has been told before, a story that also involved a paralyzed man back in 2004, called The Sea Inside. Though both films deal with the same subject, one involves a man trying desperately to kill himself, and the other about a man trying to stay desperately alive. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about one of those horrible stories we hear only through the television or newspapers, a question to the audience that goes "What would you do?" Director Julian Schnabel was not contented in telling the story in a straightforward manner, as The Sea Inside elected to use. For the first half an hour of the film, we see the world from Jean-Do's point of view, from the point that he realizes his paralysis, to the first time he sees himself through the reflection in the windows. The director not only wanted the audience to empathize with Jean-Do, but he also wanted to immerse the audience into his hospital bed, his operating mind, and see the world through his working left eye - the right eye was sewed up because it wasn't working any longer. It reminded me somewhat of the filming technique used in the recent film Cloverfield, shooting the entire film from the point of view of the first person. But this is a completely different take on that filming style. This time, you are not feeling nauseous from all the camera movements. You are feeling claustrophobic and trapped, feeling everything that Jean-Do goes through - his Hell.
As the film progresses, with the aid of veteran cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, Julian Schnabel gradually moves away from the first person perspective into the conventional third-person point of view. The significance in this change of perspective must be of Jean-Do's change of perspective as well, as he accepted his life trapped inside his own body and learned to look upon the world from a greater perspective - a brilliant touch from the director. We are also treated to several flashback and dream sequences throughout the film, some rather confusing while others are rather fantastical in nature. They represent Jean-Do's struggle to do what a normal man would be doing. Having a nice meal with a beautiful woman, ski down the side of a snow-capped mountain, to make love to his wife. Like he said, there were two more things the stroke didn't take away other than his left eyelid: his memory and his imagination. And the film very brilliantly captured the vast landscape Jean-Do managed to create with just his mind, with him lying in bed throughout the film.
What I did not like in The Sea Inside, director Julian Schnabel eliminated and took it away. In The Sea Inside, the protagonist was lionized as this hero of sorts, seen as someone determined to make his death wish come true and we were forced to support his motives. But Jean-Do is a flawed man, and the director doesn't try to hide that at all. He has a lot of regrets, he has a lot of things that he should have done, things that he ought to have been doing to the people that took so much trouble to take care of him in his times of need, to care for him even when he can never speak to them ever again. Through the monologue in his mind, we get what he is thinking, and we find out that Jean-Do is a sad man trapped in his own body, no longer able to redeem himself in real life, but through the imaginations inside his mind. The care and concern that his friends and families showered over him throughout the film was probably the most touching aspect of it all, even if he didn't treat those friends and families very well in the past.
Because of his character, Jean-Do had a few affairs while having three children and a woman whom he calls "the mother of his children" and not "wife". Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner) took care of him most of the time, if it wasn't his speech therapist Henriette (Marie-Josee Croze). His friends would read stories to him, bring him to the beach to see the ocean, and it was one day when Jean-Do decided that he'd like to write a book about his experiences. So using an eye-blinking technique developed for him, he managed to write a book in his own words with the aid of a typist. The typist would recite all the alphabets, and he'd blink at the right alphabet before moving on to the next, and that was how the system began to work, how Jean-Do started to communicate with his loved ones. But sometimes, things just cannot be conveyed through just the piecing of different alphabets.
The most heartbreaking scenes were probably the phone calls made by his father and a love mistress. Both of them called him at the hospital, but you could see the internal struggle as he tries his very best to talk. His father, played by Max von Sydow, is an old man with his own health problems, trapped in his very own apartment - in a way, like his own son. It was gut-wrenching to see the both of them trying to express their love and regrets for one another, but can't possibly do it right over the phone because his conditions just cannot allow him to do so. You felt the agony in the both of them, the anger and the frustrations, but there was nothing they could do about it. It was so depressing, that scene when his father hung up the phone and just cried his eyes out. It was probably the scene that defined the film for me, it sort of encompassed the kind of emotions that one would feel in a situation like that. Not being able to reach out to your loved ones, not physically and not verbally. Just locked inside yourself, never being able to get out. Oh, the horrors.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly triumphs because of its honest portrayal of the human spirit, never allowing the characters to dive into the pits of self-pity, always allow them to find out reasons to live, another reason to breathe. Done differently, this film could have turned out to be just another film about a paralyzed man, but this is definitely not the case. Julian Schnabel has definitely crafted a film that is from a different realm of filmmaking altogether. This film is more than a film that reaches out to tug at your heartstrings and then leave it as that. It questions what you are doing now, and what you are not doing now. What you have done, and what you haven't done. It closely examines the human condition, where there isn't very much of a human left in the body in a conventional sense, any longer. A moving tale about a man, who never, ever, under any circumstances, gave up.
Jean-Do," My diving bell has dragged you down to the bottom of the sea with me."
Celine," Jean-Do, I don't find it so bad that you drag me down to the bottom of the sea, because you will always be my butterfly."
Celine," Jean-Do, I don't find it so bad that you drag me down to the bottom of the sea, because you will always be my butterfly."
10/10
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