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| The Diving Bell And The Butterfly [2007] | ![The Diving Bell And The Butterfly [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51N1cYwWruL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Julian Schnabel
Actors: Mathieu Amalric, Lopez Garmendia, Emma De Caunes, Jean-philippe Watkins, Nicolas Le Riche
Studio: Pathe Distribution
Category: DVD
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £12.98
You Save: £7.01 (35%)
New (7) from £12.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 155
Format: Pal
Language: French (Original Language)
Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Running Time: 112 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.5
EAN: 5060002835975
ASIN: B0015VI366
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: June 9, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Amazon.co.uk Review
The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralysed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an outstanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humour and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown painter, but he's crafted an intimate visual poem, a humble sonata about life at its most fragile. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
Funny, moving and beautifully shot - the best film of 2007! July 4, 2008
The book is so beautiful a piece of personal philosophy that I went to see the film with some trepidation, but if anything the film adds to the book by Bauby. The film is beautifully shot, funny and moving (but not in a sentimental way).
The director (who does not speak fluent French) chose to retain the original language of the book and this, I believe speaks volumes in a world of cinema where the digestability of a film by a mass audience is often classed as more important than retaining the soul of a piece of artistic cinema. The film was originally meant to be made by Pathe and star Jonny Depp - I think a tragedy was averted!
This film can be enjoyed (yes enjoyed - despite its theme it really isnt at all depressing) on so many levels - as a compelling human story, as an uplifting philosophy and as a work of art. You should not miss this film.
Touched by genius June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Just when you started to feel that film had become little more than a merchandising exercise, along comes a release that reminds you what it can be. Reading The Diving Bell one could be forgiven for thinking it essentially unfilmable - so much is going on inside the head of the protagonist, there's little `action' not a great deal of dialogue, a slight plot... Yet, Schnabel's film is touched with genius and blessed with uniformly excellent performances, from the speech therapist down to the telephone engineers. Moreover, unlike other films dealing with disability, where the audience looks `at' the disability, here we look `from' - and there's a big difference. The decision to take the point of view from inside Bauby's head is inspired and completely transforms the relationship of the viewer to the subject. Technically and aesthetically it is a triumph - it's quite difficult to think how it could have been improved, even down to the soundtrack. Obviously, there's a depressing side to the tale of a man stricken by total paralysis(!), but the film stands as a testament to the remarkable resilience of the human spirit.
A must see film - a total gem May 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Can I just start by saying: this film is outstanding. It clearly benefits from the remarkableness of Jean-Dominique Bauby's book - the notion of a man with 'locked-in' syndrome being able to write such a poetic story about his experiences using only the blinking of his left-eye to signal the letters of the words is, in itself, awe-inspring. It would seem an almost impossible task to turn such a book into a film, but it has been done here with considerable skill.
The film adopts a highly phenomenological approach, using blurred shots, muffled sounds, metaphor clips, flashbacks, to tell the story in a perfectly-timed and engaging fashion. Some of the frames, to my mind are incredibly powerful in evoking all the senses - one that particularly sticks in my mind is the 15 second shot of his girlfriend's hair, shot from behind, flowing in the wind, full-frame, on the way down to Lourdes. Images like this keep reminding us of how little we appreciate until its lost.
This is an emotional film, it made me laugh and cry. The ensemble cast is outstanding, I don't think there was a dud line, a dud shot or a beat-missed in the whole film. I can't wait for this to come out on DVD and I shall now be rushing off to read the original text. When I finished watching "The Diving Bell and the Buttefly" I thought that it was the best film I'd seen since "The Lives of Others". The more I reflect on it, I think its actually better. Don't miss this gem!
Believe the Hype. May 25, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Every aspect of this film is utterly sublime and extremely well-judged. I am not normally prone to writing reviews on Amazon that simply verify what has been said many times before, but I found this film so satisfying that I feel compelled.
Firstly, this film is stunning visually - as well being an excellent development of the idiosyncratic aesthetic style that Julian Schnabel deployed in Before Night Falls, it captures the atmosphere and lyricism of the book perfectly. At no point does it feel like an "against-all-odds true story" in the vein of The Sea Inside and My Left Foot, films that came across as entirely dependent on their leading actors' talents.
The film portrays potentially quite morbid details in such a way that at times they are quietly meditative and at others entirely transcended, another intrinsic subtlety brought over from the book.
A masterpiece April 18, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the true story of a Jean Dominique Bauby, the debonair editor of French Elle, who suffered locked in syndrome following a devastating stroke. After the stroke he can only communicate by blinking his eye.
Everything about this as a premise for a film sounds terrible - he does not move, so what is filmic about it; he does not communicate verbally, so where is the dialogue or the relationships; he reflects on his life and his mortality, but how do you show that?
Do not be put off. The film is beautifully made, turning faces into landscapes and using careful palettes of colour to distinguish pre and post stroke scenes. The film shows how Jean-Do becomes a cypher for those around him, providing meaning to their lives, even though inside he is intrinsically himself. In the end, the film is about the meaning of this man's life and all our lives, clear-eyed and fearless.
It is moving without being sentimental or mawkish, insightful, funny, beautiful and intelligent. An absolute must see.
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