Ill-Informed Gadfly

“Locked-in syndrome” is the unusually descriptive term for the plight of Jean-Dominique Bauby. In 1995, the stylish and high-flying editor of French Elle magazine suffered a massive stroke that left him able to move only his left eye. A speech therapist devised a way for Bauby to communicate by blinking, one laborious letter at a time, and that’s how he wrote his memoir, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” In the movie version of Bauby’s book, director Julian Schnabel locks you in with him. The first act sticks mostly to Bauby’s point of view, with the camera revealing only his narrow field of vision. Yet even in the most excruciating moments, Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood don’t wallow in despair. Voice-overs establish Bauby’s sardonic personality and undiminished sensual appetites, and even through his tiny window on the world, he sees absurd humor and luminous beauty. Then Schnabel frees the camera to go anywhere Bauby’s imagination goes. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a remarkably irrepressible and lyrical movie, one that finds ragged epiphanies in Bauby’s grim circumstances. It stirs your emotions with unlikely images. As Bauby laments that his life was “a string of near-misses,” Schnabel shows chunks of ice falling off an iceberg into the sea. He’s just as good when he lets his actors lead the way, as in a flashback to Bauby giving a shave to his elderly father, played gracefully by Max von Sydow. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” could easily wear you out, but instead it leaves you elated.

LISTEN: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly