Le scaphandre et le papillon - Stranger than Fiction

Le scaphandre et le papillon (Diving Bells and the Butterfly) is a French movie based on the memoirs of Jean-Dominique Bauby, which goes by the same name. Probably more remarkable than the book is that the book was written at all. What greater demonstration of the human spirit than that it was written by a person whose only means of communication with the outside world was the blink of a single eye!

Bauby was the editor of the fashion magazine Elle before suffering from a stroke, which left him in a condition called the locked-in syndrome. The stroke left him completely paralyzed, though fully conscious and mentally alert. The only movement he could perform was blinking his left eye. To communicate with him, a protocol was devised. For yes-no questions, a single blink would mean yes, while two blinks would mean a no. Whenever he had something to say, the listener would read out all the letters of the alphabet and Bauby would blink his eye when the desired letter was read out. To optimize time, letters were read out in order of decreasing frequency in the French language. Messages were thus communicated painfully. The entire book was written letter by letter in this fashion. Remarkable, isn't it? The movie depicts the entire exercise beautifully.

The best thing about the movie is that it is an audio and visual narrative from Bauby's own point of view. Through most of the movie, you see the world through Bauby's own eyes. The field of vision is restricted to his own eyes. The scenes of tears blurring his vision, of his eyelids battling when his right eye is sewn up give an amazing first person account of his story.

What really takes the cake, though, is the brilliant audio narrative of Bauby's character that runs through the movie. I don't understand a word of French, yet tone and the modulations never made me feel like I was reading subtitles. Through his voice, his journey from despair and cynicism, to acceptance, to finding hope and joy come through beautifully. Some scenes are comically tragic, like when the TV channel is changed by the nurse and all he can do is swear at the top of his voice in his mind!.

The movie's name is a allusion to the two facets of his own conditions. On one hand his locked-in condition makes his life going downwards like a sinking bell, which can do nothing. Or is it? Even if everything is chained down, what can stop his imagination from flying as freely as a butterfly? It is his imagination he needs to survive and to maintain his sanity. The movie and his memoirs are a story of his mental journey to his past, to a realization of his mistakes and to dreaming of his fantasies.

Bauby expired two days after his book was published, and the movie was made much later. A highly recommended movie. Thanks to Ajay and Prathab for repeatedly recommending this movie.

That kicks off my foreign language collection. Next in line is Akira Kurasowa.