In an effort to invest some sort of film-watching gluttony among others, here's another review, too; one that I wrote for my school newspaper's film section. It's been a while since I actually wrote a proper critical entry like this.

Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
(Julian Schnabel 2007 | France / USA)

What is it about scenes in films wherein men shave other men? John Huston was fond of them: in Key Largo (1948), Edward G. Robinson is shaved by a henchman, while Under the Volcano (1984) sees Albert Finney affectionately groomed by a younger friend. If nothing else, both scenes have in common a certain intimacy, a humble and subtle humanity – even if Robinson does play a nasty gangster and Finney a suffering alcoholic. Evoking the same tone in one of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s many flashback scenes, director Julian Schnabel has Mathieu Almaric shave his on-screen, apartment-ridden father, played by Max von Sydow (who, incidentally, starred in Huston’s The Kremlin Letter in 1970). Here, though, the tone is especially poignant – in the context of the film, we already know Jean-Dominique Bauby, who Almaric plays, has been diagnosed with “locked-in syndrome”. Bauby, whose memoirs the film adapts, was editor of Elle magazine when he suffered a stroke in 1995, aged 43. Totally paralysed but for his left eye, he was able to communicate by blinking alone. If his situation sounds grim, it is; though Schnabel is able to invest welcome wit and a fine measure of narrative purpose. The inherent self-reflexivity of the first-person narration allows the script to externalise viewpoints without becoming problematic: the bold and limiting choice to film from Bauby’s own bed-ridden point of view is given much relief, both narratively and visually, as the protagonist grows increasingly articulate in his new means of communication. The selective flashbacks and Bauby’s own fantasies help, too; the latter especially recall Michael Gambon’s singing detective. As the title suggests, Bauby’s self-inspection offers the central theme of triumph over adversity: “I decided to stop pitying myself,” he says at one point. “Other than my eye, two things aren't paralysed: my imagination and my memory.” And even if the film is a stark reminder of one’s own mortality, it is, in typical existential fashion, just as much celebratory of life. True to its real-life central figure, Diving Bell is finally uplifting and inspiring. I, for one, feel like writing a book.