433 - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, France, 2007. Dir. Julian Schnabel.
Hold fast to the human inside of you, and you'll survive.
So says Pierre Roussain. To Jean-Do. The nickname for Jean-Dominique Bauby. Editor of Elle magazine in Paris. Jean-Do loves life and leads a big life. Fast cars. Great restaurants. Trips around the world. Daring adventures.
Until now.
Pierre Roussain has come to Jean-Dominique to give him encouragement after his stroke. Or what the doctors are calling a cerebrovasular accident. Jean-Do can see and hear and think, but he cannot respond. He is paralyzed from head to toe. Or as they say, he has locked-in syndrome.
He describes himself as ambitious, somewhat cynical, and heretofore a stranger to failure.
We are looking through his eyes.
Jean-Do once gave Pierre Roussain his seat on a flight as an act of kindness.
The plane was hijacked. Pierre Roussain was held hostage in Beirut, Lebanon. For four years, four months, two weeks, five days, and seven hours. In a dark cellar. Where it was hard to breathe. He called it his tomb.
Every day he recited the top Bordeaux wines of 1855. Chateau Margaux. Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. Etc. As a way to keep his mind sharp. As a way to stay sane. In the midst of despair, suicidal thoughts, anger, brutality, filth, and cruelty. And waiting.
He survived.
By clinging to what makes him human.
And he encourages his friend Jean-Do to do the same.
Hold fast to the human inside of you, and you'll survive.
Pierre Roussain's encouragement works. Jean-Do seizes upon it. He has been connected to the human all along.
Jean-Dominique's father also relates to him. Mr. Bauby, who goes by Papinou, is 92 years old and lives on the fourth-floor. He cannot make the flights of stairs, so he is trapped in his apartment. His own tomb. He loves his son. He misses his son. He weeps for his son.
We have been living life in Jean-Do's body. Seeing the world through his eyes. Feeling locked up. Trapped. And stuck.
We are at Berck-sur-Mer hospital.
We started the movie here. Awakening. Seeing darkness. Followed by out-of-focus glimpses. Through a hand-cranked camera with a special lens. And the actor, Mathieu Amalric, in sound-proof booth, watching on a monitor, improvising his thoughts as the other actors look and speak at "him" directly into the camera.
Jean-Dominique has two beauties working with him. That is what Doctor Cocheton calls them. And Jean-Do agrees.
One of the beauties, his speech therapist, is Henriette Durand (curiously listed as Henriette Roi in the end credits and on IMDb, but explicitly Durand in the movie). She is played by Marie-Josee Cruze in an outstanding and sensitive performance. The kind of performance that puts an actor on your radar screen and makes you want to watch more of his or her work.
She has taught him to communicate by blinking, or winking, his one open eye, his left eyelid, as she recites the alphabet and gets to the letter he wants to spell. Ingeniously, she does not recite the alphabet in alphabetical order but in the order of most frequent use, so that she will get to his desired letters more quickly. E. S. A. R. Etc.
He spells his feelings to her.
"I want to die."
She typically can finish his words and sentences for him. "Want" when he spells w-a-n, "die" when he spells d-i, etc. (Only in French, of course. So actually "Je veux mourir." You have to get used to the subtitles not matching the sounds letter for letter. Je means I. You hear them say "J" and the subtitle says "I.") And her face fills with flush and her eyes grow red. She turns her head and turns back and swells with emotion in one take, without cutting. If you know about Eleonora Duse's blush, this is one of those moments. Marie-Josee Cruze is living truthfully under imaginary given circumstances. It is an acting moment worthy of award recognition.
"How dare you. There are people who love you, to whom you matter. I have only known you a short time, and you matter to me."
She cares deeply for him. She is fighting for him. Giving her heart and soul and daily life's work for him.
She takes it personally what he says.
She leaves.
He watches.
She returns and apologizes.
There is a palpable chemistry between them.
You are waiting for him to blink the phrase, "I love you," to her. Not as in romance. But from a deeper place. Human to human. From the center of his soul.
He learns to communicate. He turns his head a little. He learns to hum, or make some kind of noise with his mouth.
And then he finds his new life purpose.
"Other than my eye, two things aren't paralyzed. My imagination and my memory. They're the only two ways I can escape from my diving bell."
"I can imagine anything I want. Live out my boyhood fantasies, and my adult ambitions."
As an editor, he is a lifelong journalist. A writer. He decides to write. His publisher owes him a book.
He had planned to write a modern version of Alexandre Dumas' (1802-1870) The Count of Monte Cristo (1845)--transforming the protagonist into a modern woman.
Now he is going to write a different work. A memoir of his life inside this diving bell.
Henriette calls his publisher for him.
He says he has a contract with you to write a book.
He has a contract, but under the circumstances . . .
He wants to do it.
The publisher is incredulous but finally relents. She sends over a transcriptionist. A woman.
Claude Mendibil
Claude has to learn the technique. She does. Bauby puts himself under a rigorous schedule. He awakens at 5:00 am. He spends the next three hours conceiving and memorizing what he wants to say. Claude arrives and they begin at 8:00 am sharp. They work for five hours. Spelling every word. Letter by letter. With the blink, or the wink, of an eye.
Jean-Dominique remembers his life in flashbacks. He tells Claude. He tells us.
He recounts the last time he talked to his father. While shaving him. While trying not to cut him.
His father castigated him for leaving his wife. He tells him to take care of her no matter what. Even if he has another lover.
"I know what I'm talking about. I've had more affairs than anyone, except maybe Casanova. Having a mistress is no excuse for deserting the mother of your children."
Jean-Dominique appreciates his father. Loves his father. And if you dig even a smigeon below the surface, you will discover that the filmmaker, Julian Schnabel, is talking about his own father and how much he loves him. Schnabel's father was 92 and near death. Schnabel shaved him. Schnabel looked for a way to eleviate his fears. To comfort him. To ease his pain. In this moment the real Jean-Dominique Bauby, the director Julian Schnabel, and the actors, Mathieu Amalric and Max von Sydow, speak volumes about the love between a father and son.
Jean-Do tells us.
"A father's approval. It comforted me then and it comforts me even more now. We're all children. We all need approval. I want to see my children."
His wife, or ex-wife, Celine, still loves him. She visits him alone. She visits him with the children. She sits with him. Reads to him. Talks to him. Feeds him. Wipes his saliva. Takes him on trips to the beach.
She tells him, "You're the most amazing man I've ever met."
Claude, his transcriptionist, begins to love his mind as well. She says, "Jean-Do, there is no place I have ever been that is more beautiful than your thoughts. . . . I don't mind you dragging me to the bottom of the ocean, because you're also my butterfly."
One of his other helpers, Marie, played by Julian Schnabel's then-wife Olatz Lopez Garmendia, develops a humorous relationship with him. She takes him to church. The priest is kind to him. The priest asks if he would like to take Communion. He blinks no. Marie says yes. The priest asks if he would like to go to Lourdes. He blinks no. Marie says yes. Jean-Do talks to us about how many people around the world are praying for him, people of many different faiths. And it baffles him because he is agnostic and feels hypocritical to ask them. He recounts to us a story of when he already did go to Lourdes. With a girlfriend. And it only revealed to them how different they were.
There are beautiful scenes with Jean-Do and his family. Tom Waits sings "All the World is Green" as they frolic at the beach. As his children give him their unconditional love.
When he finishes his book, he dedicates it to his children. "For Theophile, Celeste, and Hortense. Wishing them lots of butterflies."
The film is powerful and touching and heartfelt, as well as claustrophobic and painful and frustrating. As it should be. We are experiencing his life.
The film is actually an American film, put together by producers Kathleen Kennedy and Jon Kilik and directed by the American painter with the German name who comes from Brooklyn by way of Brownsville, Texas.
But it was director Schnabel who insisted on filming it in French in France. Because it is a French story about a French man. He filmed in the actual hospital using actual nurses and orderlies, and went to the other actual locations.
And he fills the film with images and sounds, moments and montages, that spring from the mind of a painter.
Every frame a Schnabel.
Every word a Bauby.
Every moment a call to open our hearts to life. To love.
And to be grateful for what we have.
* * * * *
Through the frayed curtain, a wan glow heralds the break of day. My heels ache, my head weighs a ton, my whole body is encased in a kind of diving suit. My task now is to write the motionless travel notes from a castaway on the shores of loneliness.
Originally, this Naval Hospital was a home for children with TB. In the main hall is a white marble bust of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, the hospital's patron, who visited it often. There was a large farm, a school, and a place where, reputedly, the great Diaghilev rehearsed his Ballets Russes. They say it was here that Nijinsky made his famous leap twelve feet in the air. Nobody leaps here anymore. These days we're all elderly and feeble, or like me, rigid and mute. A battalion of cripples.
I like being wheeled to a place I call Cinecitta, a deserted terrace overlooking a landscape heavy with the poetic and offbeat charm of a movie set. Below the dunes, some buildings conjure up a western ghost town. I enjoy seeing the suburbs of Berck. They look like a model train layout. And the sea foam is so white it looks like a special-effects job.
But my favorite sight is the lighthouse. Tall, robust, and reassuring with its red and white stripes. I place myself under its brotherly protection, guarding not just sailors, but the sick, whom fate has cast to the far edge of life.
It's not Balzac. Read me some Balzac. Or Graham Greene.
A text doesn't exist until it can be read.
* * * * *
JULIAN SCHNABEL
We first met Julian Schnabel when we discussed artists who become filmmakers while watching Japanese artist Takashi Murakami's 2015 film Jellyfish Eyes.
Jellyfish Eyes
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/07/188-jellyfish-eyes-2015-japan-dir.html
We also saw Jean-Pierre Cassel when watching Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 classic Army of Shadows.
Army of Shadows
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/03/089-army-of-shadows-1969-france-dir.html
JANUSZ KAMINSKI
The film was filmed by the one and only cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. He has been nominated for 6 Oscars and won 2. He was nominated for Lincoln (2013), War Horse (2011), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), and Amistad (1997). He won for Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Schindler's List (1993). Notice that outside of this film, all five of the others were directed by Steven Spielberg.
And if you ever worry that doing cheap schlock at the beginning of your career might hurt you, note that it did not hurt him. He began as a Gaffer in B horror, with titles such as Saturday the 14th Strikes Back (1988), Stripped to Kill 2: Live Girls (1989), Dance of the Damned (1989), After Midnight (1989), Streets (1990), Watchers II (1990), Grim Prairie Tales (1990), The Rain Killer (1991), The Terror Within II (1991). His first significant work was for Billy Bob Thornton as cinematographer on One False Move (1992). Once he got Schindler's List, he was off to the races. So far he has made at least 17 pictures with Steven Spielberg as well as working with several other great directors.
MAX VON SYDOW
The father, Mr. Bauby, who goes by Papinou, is played by The Great One. Max Von Sydow.
Max Von Sydow came to international acclaim in his fifth movie, as the knight Antonius Block, in Ingmar Bergman's classic masterpiece The Seventh Seal (1957). He went on to perform in a whopping eleven movies for Ingmar Bergman. We have seen six of them.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/215-seventh-seal-1957-sweden-dir-ingmar.html
Wild Strawberries (1957)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/215-wild-strawberries-1957-sweden-dir.html
The Magician (1958)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/216-magician-1958-sweden-dir-ingmar.html
The Virgin Spring (1960)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/218-virgin-spring-1960-sweden-dir.html
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/219-through-glass-darkly-1961-sweden.html
Winter Light (1963)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/220-winter-light-1963-sweden-dir-ingmar.html
We also saw, or heard, him as the narrator in Lars Von Trier's 1991 Europa.
Europa (1991)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/235-europa-1991-denmark-dir-lars-von.html
Max Von Sydow played Jesus in George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Rev. Abner Hale in George Roy Hill's adaptation of James A. Michener's Hawaii (1966), Father Merrin in William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), G. Joubert in Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon (1980), Major Karl Von Steiner in John Huston's soccer movie starring Sylvester Stallone, Victory (1981), King Osric in Conan the Barbarian (1982), Blofield in the unofficial James Bond Never Say Never Again (1983), Doctor Kynes in Dune (1984), Frederick in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), the voice of Vigo in Ghostbusters II (1989), Dr. Peter Ingham in Awakenings (1990), Thor Carlsson in A Kiss Before Dying (1991), The Tracker in What Dreams May Come (1998), Nels Gundmundsson in Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), Lamar Burgess in Minority Report (2002), Reynard in Rush Hour 3 (2007), Dr. Naehring in Shutter Island (2010), Sir Walter Loxley in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010), The Renter in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), and Lor San Tekka in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). He will next appear in Bach, with Gerard Depardieu as Johann Sebastian Bach.
MATHIEU AMALRIC
The genius behind Jean-Dominique Bauby's character is actor and director Mathieu Amalric. He has been acting in film since 1984. Americans know him as Louis in Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005), Man at Masked Ball in Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006), Bond villain Dominic Greene in Quantum of Solace (2008), Henri Vuillard in Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale (2008), Serge X in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).
As a filmmaker, he has written and directed Mange ta Soupe (1997), Le Stade de Wimbledon (2001), On Tour (2010), The Blue Room (2014), and Barbara (2017), as well as quite a few short films. As a young man he was an Assistant Director trainee on Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987).
Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/05/136-au-revoir-les-enfants-goodbye.html
When I wrote the above blog entry for Au Revoir Les Enfants, I remember explicitly feeling that it was right for that day and time. It does not mean it was the film about which I felt the most amazed, and I certainly was not copping out. It was just on that day after that movie, it felt like the best way to express how I felt.
A Christmas Tale (2008)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/05/139-christmas-tale-2008-france-dir.html
EMMANUELLE SEIGNER
Emmanuelle Seigner plays Jean-Dominique Bauby's wife Celine. Or more accurately, the mother of his children. In a powerful performance, she stands by his side, nurtures him, brings the children, and takes him to the beach, when his mistress Ines is nowhere to be found. And in a touching scene, she fields the phone call, on speaker phone, when Ines finally calls the hospital room and wishes to speak to Jean-Do. And Celine must interpret his eye blinks back to her. After Jean-Do and Celine have been spending weeks together as a reunited family. It is painful for her, yet she handles it with strength and resolve.
Emmanuelle Seigner is married to Roman Polanski. You may remember her for having starred as Michelle opposite Harrison Ford in Polanski's thriller Frantic (1988). Julian Schnabel selected her after seeing her performance in Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992). You may also remember her starring opposite Johnny Depp in Polanski's thriller The Ninth Gate (1999). She also stars with Marion Cotillard and Gerard Depardieu in Olivier Dahan's Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose (2007).
And here is something to note. Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner starred with one another again in Roman Polanski's drama Venus in Fur (2013). A film with only two actors. The two of them. As an actress and a director. Juicy.
"It shows how human beings can be loving and empathetic." - Julian Schnabel.
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