The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007) Reality Pitted Against Hope

[A. Bengel]

Stranded without the ability to move, Jean Dominique Bauby has recurring dreams that he is trapped in a diving bell, sinking to the bottom of the ocean, suffocating on his lack of control. This idea of circumstances beyond our control which trap us forms the conflict of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, the story of a man who, for no apparent reason, suddenly finds himself the victim of a devastating stroke which leaves him completely paralyzed, his only means of communication being his eyelid, which he blinks once to say “yes” and twice for “no”.

Julien Schnabel’s direction places the audience, for the first forty-five minutes of the movie, directly into the eyes (eventually eye) of the suffering main character. Often the camera focus becomes blurry, either because Jean-Do is crying or he is waking up. There are times when the camera suddenly drops below where the action is taking place, giving us only an obscured view of what is happening. This effectively helps the viewer to experience the world the way Jean-Do experiences it. If the audience becomes confused and frustrated by their lack of a proper view, then they can barely begin to imagine the hopeless frustration felt by Bauby.

As the film progresses, Bauby’s outlook toward life becomes more and more bleak, eventually prompting him to tell his speech therapist, “I want death.” But as he becomes more and more depressed, he begins to notice the role his imagination plays in making it through each day. He begins to conjure elaborate fantasies involving everyone he has ever met, including his doctors, his therapists, his wife and the woman who helps him to write the book on which this film is based. He derives increasing comfort from these mental images, and daily exerts more energy toward their realization.

In addition to his imagination, Bauby spends more time developing his memory. He achieves enormous comfort from thinking of better times and places from his past. It is because of this that we learn about Bauby’s life up until his stroke, and through a series of flashbacks we learn about his aversion toward religion. When taken by a devout girlfriend to a ceremony involving prayer, he starts by wanting to leave, and ends by breaking up with her. He is unable to understand the comfort that faith and fantasy has given her.

By the end of the film, Bauby has acknowledged that his brain was his butterfly. In the face of a reality that weighs him down, both physically and spiritually, stands his imagination. The thought that he might one day hop out of his wheelchair and dance with his therapist helps him to make it from day to day. While Bauby never expresses a change in his attitude toward religion, the clear motif of that practice is obviously meant to inspire comparison between it and his imagination. Both can be viewed as methods of dealing with the harsh reality of everyday life, and both help key characters in the film to overcome enormous hardship.

A character in the film who further emphasizes the importance of the human spirit for survival is Roussin, a man who, through extraordinary coincidence, found himself a foreign prisoner for four years. He explains to Bauby how his mind helped him from losing his sanity while locked away. He simply repeated facts he already knew over and over.

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” paints the picture of a constant struggle between reality and imagination. While the former would, if focused on, cause a victim of circumstance to lose his mind, the latter offers relief from the strain. This message of the value of hopes and dreams can be applied to our daily lives, even if we aren’t all paralyzed.

[kwallace]

Does the film suggest that we are all paralyzed? Paralyzed by the fear of not reaching our dreams or fulfilling some god given institution? There are multiple times in the film that Jean Do evaluates his present humanity and questions what is more or less human. It is with these questions that he begins to realize that one of the greatest aspects of humanity is the ability of the imagination; to take us to worlds we can only dream of. And sometimes, maybe that realization that we can only dream of these places is paralysis in itself. But, we will always have our imaginations, and that becomes comforting. The moment during which Jean Do reflects as the glaciers tumble is an evaluative question that each and every individual should ask themselves. Are we truly blind right now? Or can we see what we have in front of us and take advantage of what we can touch, feel, talk to...

[Lsogn]

Leaning closely into Jean-Do’s paralyzed face, his friend, Roussin tells him to “hold fast to the human side.” As you observed, he shared with Jean-Do his habit of reviewing expensive French wine, reciting labels to himself, as a method to keep himself sane while being held hostage in Beirut for over four years. “I know a lot about wine,” Roussin said stoically. Jean-Do had allowed Roussin to take his seat on a flight which was later hijacked to Lebanon. As a result of suffering a stroke and being hijacked, both Jean-Do and Roussin were forced into new and altered realities.

When catastrophe strikes--either due to illness or political upheaval, there are a variety of emotional reactions. Jean-Do blinked the letters spelling “death”--and Roussin stated that he experienced “...despair and [thoughts of] suicide.” In spite of the bleak reality facing both men, they managed to survive. For Jean-Do, the ability to move towards acceptance was when he realized that he could escape his diving bell through the two things he could control: his memories and his imagination. Roussin said he “...survived by clinging to what made me human.”

Both men make a passing reference to the meaning of “time.” Roussin mentions the exact number of years, months and days that he was held captive. By marking time-- and tallying the cumulative number with great precision--it seemed he was able to buffer his defenses against all the horrors he faced. As mentioned above, Jean-Do valued the past and relied upon his memory bank as one way to exercise control over his situation. Before pneumonia led to his death, Jean-Do was starting to accept the reality that he would live the rest of his life in the Naval Hospital. “My life is here,” he stated. He also showed a longing for the future when he stated that he looked “...forward to the autumn.”

When Jean-Do saw Roussin approach him from the other end of the outdoor balcony, he was overcome with feelings of guilt and shame for never contacting Roussin when he was set free and later returned to France. Jean-Do knew the role he played in Roussin’s four year ordeal. From Roussin’s point of view, he sees Jean-Do’s experience with Locked-In Syndrome as being similar to his and says, “I think I can roughly guess what you’re feeling.” He also offers this realistic appraisal of Jean-Do’s situation: “I had no choice, same as you.” Whether trapped within one’s own body or a prisoner’s cage, both men were “locked-in” against their will. How they coped with their circumstances offers insight into the meaning of survival.

[E Black]

I think kwallace makes an interesting point, asking whether the film is suggesting we're all paralyzed. I kind of made the same connection, since Bauby needs his imagination and memory to ground him against his condition, perhaps we too are in need of certain aspects of our lives to ground us against our condition, whatever that may be. While Bauby's condition is obviously more defined, and at least physically more threatening to his survival, I think the film is posing that perhaps our condition may be just as threatening, just not as obvious.