Imprisoned in Your Own Body: The Divingbell and the Butterfly (2007)

I had a unique opportunity to watch The Divingbell and the Butterfly today that I simply couldn't pass up. So almost immediately after finishing Tokyo Drift I watched this as a sort of "bonus" movie. This was actually recommended to me, and thank God it was because I had totally forgotten about it, and I had been meaning to see it since it first came out. It's the story of a man who has suffered a sever stroke and is now entirely paralyzed all except for one eye. Not only that, but the film is a real life biography told from his perspective! Hit the jump to see how it all turned out.


The story here is of Jean-Do Bauby (short for Jean-Dominique) who is portrayed by Mathieu Amalric. He was a real man and although he was completely paralyzed and could not speak, he managed to tell his story through a unique form of communication. He had nurses and speech therapists transcribe his thoughts, letter by letter. The method they used is that they have the letters of the alphabet arranged by frequency of use and they would read off the letters. When they got to the one he wanted he would blink once and they would start over. Slowly but most certainly, he wrote a book in this way and this film is based on that book.

Blinking with each letter is the only way Jean-Do could communicate to the world

Everything about this movie was fantastic. The acting was real, the script was poetic, and the visuals were often beautiful and mesmerizing. Perhaps most importantly, the story was sad, happy, captivating and touching. The way the cinematography and editing worked to give you Jean-Do's perspective was incredible. You completely got the feeling of being trapped and helpless, and what's possibly even more horrifying, is that it's within your own body.

There's not much I can say about this movie other than that it's a masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. It won't be for everyone, I can see that some might find it boring as it's quite slow paced. But it was the unique perspective of this man and his never ending stream of thoughts and great personality really kept me hooked. I'm going to bring up a SPOILER in a moment so if you don't want that ruined I will finish here and say that I highly recommend this film.

The last thing I want to bring up might be a SPOILER, so you are hereby warned. Possibly the most surprising thing to me was to find out he actually passed away in 1997, March 9th. That day also happens to be my birthday. O_O