No Ordinary Fool

Ça, c’est une vie?

This line is delivered twice with considerable force and anger by Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) early on in the film. The only difficulty is that they are spoken in his mind, as he can no longer use his paralysed mouth.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a powerful and faithful cinematic representation of Bauby’s memoirs, which were laboriously dictated by him over months by means of blinking his left eye – the only part of his body that he could still move. Bauby had been the editor-in-chief of the French fashion magazine Elle before he suffered a rare form of stroke in 1995 that left his fully functioning mind locked inside an otherwise permanently immobile body.

Despite the awfulness of his situation, Bauby displays a tremendous strength of character. Naturally, at first, there is anger and deep despair. Remarkably, though, he refuses to give in and, having learned to accept that his body has become this “diving bell”, he learns how to fly free of its confines thanks to the power of his memory and imagination.

Audaciously, the audience is only allowed to witness the world for the first thirty minutes through the mind and left eye of Bauby. Here, the awfulness of waking up from weeks of being in a coma to discover the horror of what has happened is interspersed with the humour of his acerbic wit regarding the way in which the doctors try to explain his condition to him. Similarly, Baudy’s Gallic frustration when confronted with the beautiful speech therapist and physiotherapist who are to treat him is intended to elicit laughs not pity.

One of the film’s mysteries, though, is the utter dedication of Claude, the editor who transcribes his blinks into words. Without her, the book would never have been written. Yet there is little sense for who she is, other than the suggestion in one scene that she may have fallen in love with the mind trapped behind that frozen façade. Her story would be an interesting one.

I also thought that there were some clear parallels with the movie 21 Grams. Both feature a man struck down by a debilitating ailment having once enjoyed the corporal pleasures of life. Both also ask the question that if there is a God, why do awful things happen to people? Finally, both films seek to portray humanity in the face of adversity. Indeed, it would be interesting to know if Bauby’s memoirs had any influence on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film.

Indeed, this exploration of spiritual faith recurs frequently in the film, including two terrifically humorous scenes on this topic – the first on the prayers being said for him and the second being a flashback to a reluctant “pilgrimage” that he once made to Lourdes.

Finally, I would do a huge disservice not to mention the legendary Max von Sydow, who plays Bauby’s elderly and infirm father. He has just two brief scenes in the film, but both are memorable displays of acting.

It has been a while since I last felt like instinctively clapping at the end of a movie. Yet the ending to here is so simple yet effecting that this is precisely the response that it triggers.

This film is an unquestionable triumph – both as a testament to the human spirit and as a piece of bold movie-making. Or, to put it even more simply, a remarkable life remarkably portrayed.