The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly aka "Le Scaphandre et la Papillon" (Julian Schnabel, 2007)

"Still Life with Wandering 'I'"

At one point, early in Julian Schnabel's inexplicably gripping realization of Jean-Dominique Bauby's blink-by-blink account of his coping with a paralyzing stroke, the camera leaves the confines of the eye of Bauby (his paralysis is nearly total, only his left eye is capable of movement in order to scan his world, and communicate with those around him) and changes perspective to move across the room in a blur to witness his mistress putting up pictures from his past to aid in his recovery. That surrealistic freeing moment allows us (the audience) the chance to change perspective as well; instead of looking out from Bauby's fixed position, as will happen a good 60-70% of the time, we turn inward and see an approximation of his thoughts. Or are those his thoughts; could it be an hallucination; could it be an out-of-body experience; could it be his soul talking?

Bauby's condition is referred to clinically as "Locked-In Syndrome," where the brain is active, although the body cannot move. And Schnabel's film gives a lie to the label, as Bauby's life-in-paralysis is anything but locked-in. Although he is frequently only a passenger in his life, Schnabel points out that reality and perception is only when component to a life. There is also the vast store of life inside the mind.

Throughout the film we are privy to Bauby's internal life,* but often those thoughts become images--memories, imaginings, lusts, fantasies, body-images. Rarely are there violations of the POV rule, where we share Bauby's point of view in whatever form it takes, and turn around to see his minimal reactions--a quivering lip, a tear, a drool. But even those are edited to form a piece of the whole--to make a sum of Jean-Do's experience of a "still," but rich life.**

Variations on the one-point perspective:

The Normal: Jean-Do's point of view from his hospital bed

Extreme POV: Bauby watches his right eye-lid being sewn shut

Break-Out: Jean-Do extrapolates out from his view-point to see his mistress' face

Body-image: Jean-Do imagines himself unable to move underwater in a rigid diving suit

Fantasy: Jean-Do imagines his isolation on a family outing at the beach.

Memory: Jean-Do remembers shaving his father (Max Von Sydow)--

a time when he assisted someone who was helpless

Interpretation: Pictures hung in his hospital room, abnormally close, contrasting

Memory or Imagination: Calving glaciers--a symbol of decay?

Hallucination: Is his mistress visiting or not?

Scene-setting: Jean-Do imagining his interaction, or director convenience?

Reality

* Even though the producers are American, and the scriptwriter and director are British, the entire film is in french dialect at Schnabel's insistence. It has an added benefit--it is one more "remove" from Bauby. We can hear his thoughts, but, unless you're French and speak it, it needs to be translated, just as his internal thoughts needed to be communicated through his eye-blinks and interpreted. It is one more level of audience-sympathy with the subject.  

 

** Schnabel couldn't adhere completely to that rule--In the phone conversation with his publisher, the director cuts to the publisher's office to see her quandary about agreeing to a book by a paraplegic—something Bauby is not privy to, and his nurse cannot see.

Tell No One (2006)

"Margot at the Funeral"

 

One is left calculating what Tell No One reminds one of–equal parts Hitchcock and Chandler, the gritty BBC procedural mysteries,with a little bit of "The Fugitive" thrown in–but it only occurs to one to tick these things off after the film's conclusion. One is too immersed in the complicated story to look for stylistic roots while its going on. Besides that, one can't seem to un-clench the chair-arms while the roller-coaster ride is going on.

Tell No One (aka Ne le dis a personne) starts slowly enough. In its first minutes, it sets up an anniversary celebration between childhood sweethearts Alexandre and Margot Beck (François Cluzet and Marie-Josée Croze).

And then, as they say on the magazine shows, "things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Flash-forward eight years, and pediatrician Alexandre is still grieving the loss of his wife. The police are snooping around, because at the time of her murder, he was their prime suspect. But now, nearing that fateful anniversary, the gendarmes are starting to ask questions again. And the recent discovery of two buried corpses nearby only complicates the matter.

The cold case suddenly starts heating up, and making Beck quite hot under the collar.

Two sets of investigators are tracking him. Then, he begins to get cryptic e-mails, the first one ending with the ominous phrase "Tell No One. They Are Watching." Attached to the message is a file that he's having trouble opening. Usually the hunted man has all sorts of road-blocks put in his path; the vagaries of incompatible software have now joined the mystery lexicon.

To reveal anything more is to spoil the enjoyment of the unraveling of the story, but it involves chases, subterfuge and criminal activity in very high and very low circles, good cops and bad cops and wet-works operatives.*

Oh, and everything he knows is wrong. But that's okay–he's a man who doesn't know too much.

Tell No One is based on Harlan Coben's 2002 novel of the same name, and the switching from Jersey to France matters not a jot. Some changes have been made to the story (with Coben's appreciation), and is well-crafted by director Guillaume Canet, and none of the seams show or give you any clue for what's coming ahead. You're carried along finding new information along with the lead, played extraordinarily well by François Cluzet. He has a quiet every-man kind of face, but Cluzet takes that quality and turns it on its ear. His performance reminds me of Bob Peck's in the excellent "Edge of Darkness," and both films have similar ways of presenting new information casually. But every character is well-etched–that's part of the film's great charm–but special mention has to be made of Kristin Scott Thomas who drops as effortlessly into this french-language role as she does into her typical "English Rose" roles. And if Croze seems somewhat familiar, you might remember her as Jean-Dominique Bauby's first language therapist in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and the Dutch assassin in Spielberg's Munich.

 

Tell No One tells its story with the chilly efficiency one expects from a thriller, but what is surprising is that it does it with so much feeling and heart. Highly recommended. Go tell everyone about this one.

* In fact, the one story element that doesn't jibe I can't reveal because it would give everything away!