We see only a blur of images and claustrophobic close-ups that mirror the patient's mental state. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski with a screenplay by Ronald Harwood, the film begins with Bauby's confused awakening in the hospital after twenty days in a coma. Julian Schnabel's masterful The Diving Bell and the Butterfly allows us to better appreciate the simple pleasures in life by dramatizing the debilitating trauma faced by the 43-year old editor who suffered a massive stroke that left him unable to speak or to move his head and whose only means of communication was to blink one eye one blink for yes, two blinks for no. Though not paralyzed from head to toe like French fashion magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, many of us are in the "locked-in" syndrome locked into our resentments and our fears, a rigidity that sours us on life and keep us estranged from family and friends.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |