The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

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DVD details

Actor: Anne Alvaro, Isaach de Bankol?, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Niels Arestrup, Patrick Chesnais
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Cinematographer: Janusz Kaminski
Composer: Paul Cantelon
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-04-29
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Miramax

DVD Reviews of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

DVD Review: Interesting, but not that entertaining
Summary: 3 Stars

I think I needed more understanding of who he was, what his life was like, before the stroke, and locked in syndrome, to really engage with the film and not just watch it. I normally love intelligent films with engaging narrative but this was so much like 'navel-gazing' by the director, I felt locked out.

DVD Review: Just could not get into it
Summary: 3 Stars

It was an interesting premise, but I just could not warm to the character.

I think part of it was that in the early part of the film, we did not see enough of his past life to really have a sense of all that he has lost.

Maybe the suggestion was that he was always 'locked in' but it took too long to make it.

Although it might sound strange to say, we did not see things enough from his point of view and emotions. I mean, we have a camera lens supposed to be his one good eye, and his sarcastic comments, but there is no real stream of consciousness or even much emotion.

I tried it on the basis of a friend's recommendation but it was too weighty even for me, who normally loves foreign films.

DVD Review: Life Must Go On
Summary: 5 Stars

An enthralling story of one man's success to overcome his infirmities. The story line will bring forth the viewer's sympathy, the viewer's support for the man, and the viewer's satisfaction with desilution of the story. You may not sympathize entirely with the man because he is an accurate portrayal of a person who originally cares only for humself; but, he does improve with love.

DVD Review: touching
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a sensitive, sophisticated film about the human condition. Schnabel does not capture only the mind of a middle-aged man "locked-in" into his head, but also the microscosmos of people who raised, loved and took care of him after the incapacitating stroke. These people, and the French rehabilitation system, are very much central to the film as the American spectator watches - sometimes a bit enviously - the care and attention to personal dignity that epitomizes French healthcare.

Anyway. The film is brilliant. Schnabel creates suspense by masterfully introducing elements into the story (Bauby's comprehension that he is not heard; his face; his family). The real & imagined, dreams & fantasy, memory and real-time are mixed together seamlessly. While the director does not want to shield the spectator from the empathic pain, he also shows a man who - having lost the ability to move everything but his eye muscles, also kept his sense of humor and sarcasm, and his talent for hurting those close to him. The last scene where the wife picks up the telephone call from the mistress for whom Bauby left his family is heartbreaking. The scene where they are suturing his eyelids is profoundly painful.

The actors are superb, including the women in main supporting roles. Camera: brilliant. In other words, this film is a masterpiece.

DVD Review: Brilliant Film
Summary: 5 Stars

Excellent cinematography, acting, directing and story. This film goes right to work making the audience really feel the main characters struggle. It was a real emotional and uplifting experience watching this film and I cannot highly recommend it enough. Wish I could give this movie 10 stars. Well done and Julian Schnabel is being added to my top Directors list. Bravo!

Description of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

From Miramax Films acclaimed director Julian Schnabel and the screenwriter of THE PIANIST comes a remarkable and inspiring true story about the awesome power of imagination. Experience the triumphant tale of renowned editor Jean-Dominique Bauby a man whose love of life and soaring vision shaped his will to achieve a life without boundaries. You'll soon discover why David Benby of "The New Yorker" calls THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY "nothing less than the rebirth of the cinema."System Requirements:Running Time: 112 minutes Language: English / Spanish / French Subtitles: English / French / SpanishFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre:?DRAMA/TRUE STORY Rating:?PG-13 UPC:?786936750119 Manufacturer No:?05596700

The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralyzed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an oustanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humor and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown painter, but he's crafted an intimate visual poem, a humble sonata about life at its most fragile. --Bret Fetzer

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