Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I’m seeing this one soon, and I’m curious to see how Schnabel externalizes one of the most internal stories I can imagine a filmmaker trying to tell.

And I think I sort of chapped Holy Fool Redux’s ass a bit when I published his last review. I didn’t actually think he was a programmer... I just thought he had that same sort of breathless programmer voice that I read in a lot of festival notes.

I’m glad he’s continued to send reviews in, though, and I’m eager to check out his reaction to what Sean Penn called “one of the best films I’ve ever seen” when I interviewed him recently:

Dear Harry

After my last review, Moriarty seemed to be wondering if I was a programmer in disguise. I can assure you that is definitely not the case, just someone who’s had a decent film festival roll into town and the time to see as much of it as I can. The most recent case in point being a movie that should appeal to the fashionistas out there as well as film fans. Julian Schnabel’s latest, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is based on a true story I vaguely remembered from a few years back – the chief editor of Elle magazine suffered a massive stroke and, despite his almost complete incapacity, managed to somehow write a book about his experiences. The story passed me by at the time, but Schnabel’s retelling of it shows just what a remarkable story this is.

Jean-Dominique Bauby is the man in question (played here by Mathieu Almaric), who, awakens as the film begins, from a coma following a massive stroke. From the off, Schnabel clearly locates us in the aftermath of this event, as the majority of his film is shot in the first person as it were, from the point of view of Bauby. Thus, the screen slowly flickers into life as Bauby’s eyelids open drowsily. We vaguely hear the doctors and nurses as they crowd round his bed, Bauby’s eye’s darting around the room as much as they can, trying to take in the detail and meaning of this new existence. As his voice over shows his struggle, the enormity of his situation quickly becomes clear – for although Bauby is initially convinced he is talking back to those around him, they clearly can’t hear him. His thoughts are lucid, but his body – almost 100% unavailable to him courtesy of what the docs call ‘locked-in syndrome’ - is not. The sense of panic and claustrophobia he feels is brilliantly amped up when he hears that one of his eyes is so damaged it must be sewn shut – something that is shown to us in graphic detail as the screen is literally sewn back into darkness.

It’s a visually arresting opening silo from Shnabel, the artist turned occasional filmmaker. Indeed, this point of view approach is the film’s real strength, and despite its potential limitations, manages to engage as Bauby struggles to tell his story, via a unique system in which an adapted alphabet is read aloud to him and he moves his one available body part – his remaining eyelid (one blink for yes, two for no) – to dictate his story to a series of extremely attractive women. Even in this state, Bauby’s life is touched by more than its fair share of exotic beauty.

Inevitably, Schnabel has to break this unique visual technique to fully tell Bauby’s story, and the subsequent flashbacks are as a result not as strong, moving as they do through his memories of past relationships to the moment of his tragic collapse, via his previous high-flying life in the fashion world, (complete with cameo from fashion whore Lenny Kravitz.) Similarly, Schnabel’s oft repeated use of the visual metaphor of Bauby trapped underwater in the titular diving bell is somewhat heavy handed and in no way needed – the man’s sense of entrapment and almost suffocating enclosure is more than adequately conveyed here. The exception to these visual detours is a quietly moving sequence with Max Von Sydow as his ailing father, trapped as much in his own way by old age, as Bauby is by his syndrome.

Although afforded little on-screen time, Almaric is excellent when seen – in both before and after moments – and compelling in his dominating voice over, whilst amongst a supporting cast of gorgeous French women, Emmanuelle Seigner is a standout.
At the time of his accident, the book Bauby was planning on writing was a modern day reworking of The Count of Monte Cristo. He ended up experiencing a very different kind of emotional and physical incarceration, one that, to his credit, Schnabel has successfully found a cinematic way of conveying. It’s not giving too much away to say that Bauby lived to read the reviews of his book, but only just. Had he seen the film version, he would undoubtedly have felt satisfied.

It’s a powerful movie, and those who might run away screaming at the notion of a French art house movie told from the point of view of a quadriplegic (and that’s probably everyone) should be willing to give it a chance. It really is a case of entering someone else’s world and it’s quite a profound trip being there (for those who want to catch it in London, it plays the festival on the 21st and 22nd.)

Sticking with the claustrophobia theme, I’m off to catch Michael Haneke’s Americanisation of Funny Games on Monday. Here’s hoping he doesn’t go down the same road as George Sluizer did with The Vanishing.

Holy Fool Redux