Holy Cow, have you seen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? I just watched it on DVD and I am still reeling from taking it all in. It’s the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle magazine, who at the age of 43 suffered a massive stroke that left his entire body paralyzed except for one eyelid. He was unconscious for 20 days. When he woke up, it was discovered that he had “Locked In Syndrome”, meaning his brain was functioning normally, so essentially, he was Locked In to his own body.
A speech therapist came up with a means of communication that involved her slowly reciting from a chart containing the letters of the Alphabet organized by their popularity in the French language. Jean-Do would blink his eye once when she got to the letter he wanted, then she would start over again from the beginning. With that method, he spelled out words, then sentences. From Wikipedia:
The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid. A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E S A R I N T U L etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and each word took approximately two minutes. The book chronicles everyday events and what they are like for a person with locked-in syndrome. These events include playing at the beach with his family, getting a bath, and meeting visitors. The book was published in March, 1997. It received excellent reviews and sold 150,000 copies in the first week. Ten days after the book was published, Bauby died of pneumonia.
The movie was directed by artist Julian Schnabel and stars award-winning French actor and director Mathieu Amalric. The movie was written in English, but Schnabel decided it needed to be in French and so had the script translated. I watched it with the English subtitles turned on and had no problem watching the screen and the subtitles at the same time. I found a trailer for the movie on the Amazon.com page; I’m having trouble getting it to load but you might have better luck:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m282GNY16UNEMU:mYZLKN0YVEFS7
This is not pleasant subject matter, for sure, but the acting, directing and cinematography are some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. The movie won numerous awards-the Award for Best Director at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the Best Adapted Screenplay award from the British Academy of Film and Television, Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globe Awards, and was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Director. It might be difficult to watch, but it reminds me that, corny as it may sound, that life is indeed precious, and not to take the ability to MOVE for granted.
Oh wow! That sounds awesome. I will be watching that.
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Great review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly! It seems very interesting.. I’m going to look into it! Thanks!
What a wonderful recommendation. Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll have to check it out. Sounds like I’ll need a tissue box.
Wow…what an amazing story. Very interesting…I’ll have to check that book out…I can’t imagine being “locked in,” and being able to write a book like that.
That sounds interesting enough to entice me to watch it. Shall give it a try later and hopefully I will have a say or two about it.
I remember reading the book for a college English class. I encourage you to check out the book. It’s a very short book and could be finished in a day or two. The way it is written is amazing when you consider everything. It does get a bit sad at the end and even see a transition on how it is written as it gets closer to the end. I have yet to see the movie but do plan on it.