The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly | |
---|---|
French | Le scaphandre et le papillon |
Directed by | Julian Schnabel |
Screenplay by | Ronald Harwood |
Based on | The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby |
Produced by | Kathleen Kennedy Jon Kilik |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Janusz Kamiński |
Edited by | Juliette Welfling |
Music by | Paul Cantelon |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Pathé Distribution (France/United Kingdom) Miramax Films (United States) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 112 minutes |
Countries | France United States |
Language | French |
Budget | $12.8 million[1] |
Box office | $19.8 million[2] |
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French: Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) is a 2007 biographical drama film directed by Julian Schnabel and written by Ronald Harwood. Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's 1997 memoir of the same name, the film depicts Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. Bauby is played by Mathieu Amalric.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the César Awards, and received four Oscar nominations. Several critics later listed it as one of the best films of its decade.[3] It ranks in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.
Plot
[edit]The first third of the film is told from the main character's, Jean-Dominique Bauby, or Jean-Do as his friends call him, first person perspective. The film opens as Bauby wakes from his three-week coma in a hospital in Berck-sur-Mer, France. After an initial rather over-optimistic analysis from one doctor, a neurologist explains that he has locked-in syndrome, an extremely rare condition in which the patient is almost completely physically paralyzed, but remains mentally normal. At first, the viewer primarily hears Bauby's "thoughts" (he thinks that he is speaking but no one hears him), which are inaccessible to the other characters (who are seen through his one functioning eye).
A speech therapist and physical therapist try to help Bauby become as functional as possible. Bauby cannot speak, but he develops a system of communication with his speech and language therapist by blinking his left eye as she reads a list of letters to laboriously spell out his messages, letter by letter.
Gradually, the film's restricted point of view broadens out, and the viewer begins to see Bauby from "outside", in addition to experiencing incidents from his past, including a visit to Lourdes. He also fantasizes, imagining beaches, mountains, the Empress Eugénie and an erotic feast with one of his transcriptionists. It is revealed that Bauby had been editor of the popular French fashion magazine Elle, and that he had a deal to write a book (which was originally going to be based on The Count of Monte Cristo but from a female perspective). He decides that he will still write a book, using his slow and exhausting communication technique. A woman from the publishing house with which Bauby had the original book contract is brought in to take dictation.
The new book explains what it is like to now be him, trapped in his body, which he sees as being suspended in impenetrably murky water within an old-fashioned deep-sea diving suit with brass helmet, which is called a scaphandre in French, as in the original title. Others around see his spirit, still alive, as a "Butterfly".
The story of Bauby's writing is juxtaposed with his recollections and regrets until his stroke. We see his three children, their mother (whom he never married), his mistress, his friends, and his father. He encounters people from his past whose lives bear similarities to his own "entrapment": a friend who was kidnapped in Beirut and held in solitary confinement for four years, and his own 92-year-old father, who is confined to his own apartment, because he is too frail to descend four flights of stairs.
Bauby eventually completes his memoir and hears the critics' responses. He dies of pneumonia two days after its publication.[4][5][6] The closing credits are accentuated by reversed shootings of breaking glacier ice (the forward versions are used in the opening credits), accompanied by the Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros song "Ramshackle Day Parade".
Cast
[edit]- Mathieu Amalric as Jean-Dominique Bauby
- Emmanuelle Seigner as Céline Desmoulins
- Anne Consigny as Claude Mendibil
- Marie-Josée Croze as Henriette Durand
- Olatz López Garmendia as Marie Lopez
- Patrick Chesnais as Dr. Lepage
- Max von Sydow as Mr. Bauby Sr.
- Isaach de Bankolé as Laurent
- Marina Hands as Joséphine
- Niels Arestrup as Roussin
- Anne Alvaro as Betty
- Zinedine Soualem as Joubert
- Emma de Caunes as Empress Eugénie
- Françoise Lebrun as Madame Bauby
Production
[edit]The film was originally to be produced by American company Universal Studios and the screenplay was originally in English, with Johnny Depp slated to star as Bauby. According to the screenwriter, Ronald Harwood, the choice of Julian Schnabel as director was recommended by Depp. Universal subsequently withdrew, and Pathé took up the project two years later. Depp dropped the project due to scheduling conflicts with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.[7] Schnabel remained as director. The film was eventually produced by Pathé and France 3 Cinéma in association with Banque Populaire Images 7 and the American Kennedy/Marshall Company and in participation with StudioCanal and CinéCinéma.[8]
According to the New York Sun, Schnabel insisted that the movie should be in French, resisting pressure by the production company to make it in English, believing that the rich language of the book would work better in the original French, and even went so far as to learn French to make the film.[9] Harwood tells a slightly different story: Pathé wanted "to make the movie in both English and French, which is why bilingual actors were cast"; he continues that "Everyone secretly knew that two versions would be impossibly expensive", and that "Schnabel decided it should be made in French".[10]
Schnabel said his influence for the film was drawn from personal experience:
My father got sick and he was dying. He was terrified of death and had never been sick in his life. So he was in this bed at my house, he was staying with me, and this script arrived for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. As my father was dying, I read Ron Harwood's script. It gave me a bunch of parameters that would make a film have a totally different structure. As a painter, as someone who doesn't want to make a painting that looks like the last one I made, I thought it was a really good palette. So personally and artistically these things all came together.[11]
Several key aspects of Bauby's personal life were fictionalized in the film, most notably his relationships with the mother of his children and his girlfriend.[12][13] In reality, it was not Bauby's estranged wife who stayed by the patient's bedside while he lay almost inanimate on a hospital bed, it was his girlfriend of several years.[13]
Reception
[edit]The film received universal acclaim from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 94%, based on reviews from 176 critics, and an average rating of 8.30/10, with the general consensus stated as, "Breathtaking visuals and dynamic performances make The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a powerful biopic."[14] Metacritic gave the film an average score of 92/100, based on 36 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[15]
In a 2016 poll by BBC, the film was listed as one of the top 100 films since 2000 (77th position).[16]
Top ten lists
[edit]The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.[17]
- 1st
- Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
- Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times (tied with The Savages)
- David Edelstein, New York magazine
- Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
- Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
- Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times
- Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
- Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer
- 2nd
- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
- Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor
- Fredrik Gunerius Fevang, The Fresh Films
- 3rd
- Dana Stevens, Slate
- Desson Thomson, The Washington Post
- Liam Lacey and Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail
- Stephanie Zacharek, Salon
- Stephen Farber, The Hollywood Reporter
- Stephen Holden, The New York Times
- Steven Rea, The Philadelphia Inquirer
- 4th
- Ray Bennett, The Hollywood Reporter
- 5th
- Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
- Ty Burr, The Boston Globe
- 6th
- James Berardinelli, ReelViews
- Glenn Kenny, Premiere
- Peter Vonder Haar, Film Threat
- 7th
- A. O. Scott, The New York Times (tied with Into the Wild)
- David Ansen, Newsweek
- Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter
- Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald
- Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
Awards and nominations
[edit]It was nominated for four Academy Awards, but because the film was produced by an American company, it was ineligible for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Notes
[edit]- ^ tie with There Will Be Blood
References
[edit]- ^ "Le Scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)". JPBox-Office. Archived from the original on 23 October 2017. Retrieved 23 October 2017.
- ^ "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on 2 September 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
- ^ Dietz, Jason (3 January 2010). "Film Critics Pick the Best Movies of the Decade". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 28 April 2017. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
- ^ Boyles, Denis (10 October 2003). "Pre-Mortuarial Medicine". National Review. Archived from the original on 7 April 2005. Retrieved 4 May 2014.
- ^ Thomas, Rebecca (8 February 2008). "Diving Bell movie's fly-away success". BBC. Retrieved 4 May 2014.
- ^ Mallon, Thomas (15 June 1997). "In the Blink of an Eye". New York Times. Retrieved 4 May 2014.
- ^ Turan, Kenneth (23 May 2007). "The film Julian Schnabel 'had to' make". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 24 December 2007. Retrieved 23 May 2007.
- ^ Alexander, R.; Das, S. (2009). Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change. New Harbinger Publications. p. 210. ISBN 978-1-60882-470-0. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
- ^ Hartman, Darrell (28 September 2007). "Schnabel's Portrait of an Artist in Still Life". New York Sun. Archived from the original on 8 October 2012. Retrieved 9 May 2008.
- ^ Harwood, Ronald (24 January 2008). "How I Set the Butterfly Free". The Times. Archived from the original on 31 October 2022. Retrieved 10 March 2008.
- ^ Tewksbury, Drew (28 November 2007). "Interviews: Julian Schnabel and cast of "Diving Bell and the Butterfly"". Cargo Collective. Archived from the original on 15 May 2009. Retrieved 13 May 2008.
- ^ Arnold, Beth (23 February 2008). "The truth about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". Salon. Archived from the original on 7 July 2008. Retrieved 3 July 2008.
- ^ a b di Giovanni, Janine (30 November 2008). "The real love story behind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 April 2017. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
- ^ "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Archived from the original on 31 December 2014. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
- ^ "Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The (2007)". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 8 January 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2008.
- ^ "The 21st Century's 100 greatest films". BBC. Archived from the original on 31 January 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
- ^ "Metacritic: 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 23 February 2008. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
- ^ "80th Academy Awards". oscars.org. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "Film in 2008 | BAFTA Awards". awards.bafta.org. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "65th Golden Globe Awards Nominations & Winners". goldenglobes.org. Archived from the original on 24 May 2012. Retrieved 13 January 2008.
- ^ "Hollywood Foreign Press Association 2008 Golden Globe Awards for the Year Ended December 31, 2007". goldenglobes.org. 13 December 2007. Archived from the original on 15 December 2007. Retrieved 5 January 2008.
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". festival-cannes.com. Archived from the original on 6 August 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2009.
- ^ "César Awards 2008 : The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, nominations and wins". lescesarsducinema.com. Archived from the original on 12 April 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ^ "2007 Award Winners". National Board of Review. 2016. Retrieved 28 October 2016.
- ^ Morris, Wesley (10 December 2007). "'No Country,' 'Diving Bell' are favorites of Boston film critics". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 18 January 2013. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ Douglas, Edward (10 December 2007). "NYFCO (New York Film Critics Online) Loves Blood !". ComingSoon.net. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ Chang, Justin; McCarthy, Todd (9 December 2007). "L.A. critics call for 'Blood'". Variety. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "2007 WAFCA Awards - The Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA)". www.wafca.com. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "'Jesse James,' Clooney, Christie, Coens get S.F. critics awards". San Francisco Chronicle. 12 December 2007. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "AFI AWARDS 2007". American Film Institute. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "2007 | Categories". International Press Academy. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "2007 EDA Awards". Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "TFCA Awards 2007". Toronto Film Critics. Archived from the original on 6 October 2011. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "Awards / History / 2007". www.dga.org. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
External links
[edit]- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at IMDb
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at AllMovie
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at Box Office Mojo
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at Metacritic
- "The Nerve and The Will" review at the New York Review of Books
- 2007 films
- 2007 biographical drama films
- 2007 independent films
- American biographical drama films
- French biographical drama films
- 2000s French-language films
- BAFTA winners (films)
- Best Film Lumières Award winners
- Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe winners
- Biographical films about actors
- Biographical films about writers
- Films about disability in France
- Films about people with paraplegia or tetraplegia
- Films based on biographies
- Films based on memoirs
- Films directed by Julian Schnabel
- Films featuring a Best Actor César Award-winning performance
- Films featuring a Best Actor Lumières Award-winning performance
- Films produced by Kathleen Kennedy
- Films set in the 1990s
- Films set in France
- Films shot from the first-person perspective
- Films whose director won the Best Director Golden Globe
- Films whose writer won the Best Adapted Screenplay BAFTA Award
- Films set in hospitals
- American independent films
- French independent films
- French nonlinear narrative films
- Miramax films
- Pathé films
- The Kennedy/Marshall Company films
- France 3 Cinéma films
- Canal+ films
- Films scored by Paul Cantelon
- Films with screenplays by Ronald Harwood
- Films produced by Jon Kilik
- 2000s American films
- 2000s French films
- French-language American films
- Films about disability in the United States