Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)

(Somehow, I managed to erase my original review. This is a vain attempt at recollecting pieces of it.)

The first thing I thought about when watching this film was how cinematic the presentation was, with point-of-view camera work dominating director Julian Schnabel's presentation. But then again, how do you make it interesting for an audience when the main character of the film is a man who cannot move or speak?
You can film him in bed. But Schnabel does better. We see the world for a large portion of the film through the one good eye of Jean-Dominique Bauby, once the editor of Elle magazine and now a stroke victim who suffers from "locked-in syndrome." When a tenacious nurse teaches Bauby to communicate by running through letters of the alphabet in order of the frequency of their use while he blinks to confirm each letter, the audience movies from being frustrated by the tedious practice to being amazed by how far it is taken.
A movie about a guy blinking to spell a sentence gets old quickly, but Bauby decides, in his condition, to tell his story. He wants to write a memoir, and this moves his method of communication from monotony to miracle.
Filled with symbolic and poetic visual asides, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly reminded me at times of Johnny Got His Gun in concept. It is, ultimately, a film about the power of the human spirit without including any of the standard feel-good moments. As a matter of fact, it is a bleak film...a man cut down in the prime of life, his voice answering clearly for the audience to hear but nobody in the room can because only we are inside of his head and he can't actually speak.
I wouldn't call this an inspirational film, but it is most definitely a triumphant one. I hope that people will find the patience to get used to its striking presentational style and experience its rewards. It will, no doubt, go down as one of my favorite films of the year.

4.0 out of 4