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Julian Schnabel: The Best Director of 2007 Le scaphandre et le papillon (2007) director: Julian Schnabel starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Cosigny, Max Von Sydow This is one of few films that have really impressed me this year. 2007 has been a wonderful year for cinema and having The Diving Bell and the Butterfly released right at the end of it really made for a great conclusion. What I was impressed with the most in this film was not the fact that it was based on a true story or the actor's performances, the cinematography or the screenplay. What impressed me the most was the masterful work by director Julian Schnabel. Don't get me wrong, I loved everything about this film and everything did impress me immensely, but the direction here is impeccable and I thought that Schnabel deserved some more attention for his fantastic directorial job. "Le scaphandre et le papillon" [or "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" in English] was first a memoir published in 1997 by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French fashion magazine Elle. It details the author's life after he suffered a massive stroke which ultimately left him fully paralyzed. His condition was the rare Locked-In Syndrome in which the patient is completely aware and awake, but they are physically unresponsive due to the complete paralysis of all of the voluntary muscles in the body. The only part of his body which he could move was his left eyelid. Taking advantage of the one movable body part he had, Bauby wrote his memoir through a series of blinks. This novel was an incredible achievement not only in literature, but in human development. What I am impressed with is Julian Schnabel's attention to detail and his intricate display of images and camera techniques; angles and focuses that allow us to communicate with the character of Bauby mentally as he himself would. What Schnabel has done here is extremely artistic, but he does not overuse or abuse his visuals to a point where everything just seems like a kaleidoscope slide. Taking Bauby's story and translating it into film was undoubtedly a difficult task, but Schnabel has made what seemed like a near impossible project into something of great importance to cinematic history and of great significance to humanity. Personally, I can't imagine what Jean-Dominique Bauby was like as a person or how a Locked-In Syndrome patient would be, but I do believe that Mathieu Amalric's performance as Bauby is revolutionary. Acting with only one eye and a fixed position for almost the whole film is an extraordinary feat for an actor. He displayed some of the rawest emotions I have ever seen by an actor and he isn't even able to speak. I am very impressed with Amalric's portrayal and I think that he should be acknowledged for such a brilliant performance. The supporting cast was also important to the progression of the film and the development of Bauby's character. Marie-Josée Croze and Anne Consigny give good performances as two of Bauby's aides, but the woman who is astonishingly heartbreaking in this film is Emmanuelle Seigner. She plays Bauby's ex-wife, Celine Desmoulins, and emits such a powerful performance that I couldn't help but empathize with her. Such pathos is generated for both Bauby and Celine in this film, but the character who broke my heart the most was Bauby's Papinou. Max Von Sydow played Papinou, Bauby's father, and, even though appearing on screen for a very limited amount of time, gives an emotionally harrowing performance that is incomparable to any tearjerker out there. Not a film for the faint, the use of cinematography is exquisite, but very dizzying. It's extremely necessary for the film, but some people might be turned off by this. I beg you to give this film a chance if your reason for not watching this is the camera work. It's a brilliantly shot masterpiece by one of my favourite cinematographers of all-time, Janusz Kaminski. The use of colour, angles and focusing makes the scenes from Bauby's point of view much more real. The realism in the film's depiction of this disease from Bauby's perspective is absolutely haunting and also from the perspective of the nurses taking care of him and his family. At the 2008 Academy Awards, cinematographer Robert Elswit (also one of my personal favourites) won the Oscar for his stunning work on There Will Be Blood. Being my favourite film of 2007, it's hard to go against it, but I do believe that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly had much better cinematography and Janusz Kaminski should be holding the Oscar right now. It's a gorgeous film all around, but mainly because of Kaminski's wonderful eye and excellent camera work. A few weeks ago, I wrote a review for Woody Allen's film Interiors. An amazing film which had fantastic performances and a great screenplay and was also a direct homage to the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. With The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I feel that there is some homage or perhaps just similar styles to that of Bergman, too. Modern European cinema always seems to come back around to at least some Bergman influences, but this film is filled with many influences, most of them being visual. As said previously, Schnabel's attention to detail is impeccable, but he also allows himself the freedom to express his own vision into the film. With some of the best cinematography I've ever seen and a brilliant performance by Amalric, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has risen to be my second favourite film of 2007. It is an absolutely incredible achievement for Julian Schnabel and has engraved itself into cinema history as a stunning accomplishment of visual expression and analysis of human significance. email this review to a friend
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