Movie Review

Directed by Julian Schnable, Starring: Matheu Amalric (Jean Dominic Beauby 'Jean Do'), Emmanuelle Seigner (Celine), Max Von Sydon (Papinou), Marie Jose Croze (speech therapist), French with English subtitles, 112 minutes, 2007.

Jean Do is an egocentric high flyer in Paris; wealthy, editor of Elle Magazine, charming and well liked. One day, while driving with his eldest son he has a 'focused stroke'. After three weeks in a coma he awakes to discover that he is totally paralyzed and unable to speak, though he can hear, think and has the ability to blink his left eye. With extreme patience and perseverance by his speech therapist he learns to communicate by blinking his left eye, once for 'yes' and twice for 'no' as she goes through an alphabet ordered by frequency of use. Friends and family try and learn the method. Eventually a secretary is hired and he writes a book, the memoir on which this movie is based.

The film is masterfully shot to give us the same claustrophobic experience of looking hazily through one eye. There are touching experiences of connecting with friends and the pain of regret and guilt for things left undone that one ought to have done.

His first visitor is Celine "not my wife, the mother of my children". He has left her for a mistress but in one excruciating scene she is the only person by his bedside to interpret an intimate phone call from his current lover who has never come to see him because it would be too painful to see him paralyzed!

One visitor is a friend to whom he once gave up his seat on a plane in an act of generosity. The plane was hijacked and the friend spent months as a hostage in Beirut. When he was released Jean Do never called and he is stricken with guilt. The friend says that he thinks he has some sense of his experience based on his confinement in a dark cellar as a hostage. "You will survive", he tells him, "if you are able to find and hold on to what makes you human". His father, Papinou, is an old man confined through age and disability to an upstairs room in a house. In a flashback, Jean Do recalls an occasion in which he helped Papinou shave, a scene in which there is great camaraderie and affection. Later Papinou in deep distress about his son's condition reflects that they are each confined as prisoners and he, Papinou, is absolutely helpless to assist his son, who is absolutely helpless. Slowly Jean Do is able to blink out "Don't cry!"

So, 'what makes us human?' is the central theme of this story. Jean Do eventually comes to a point of moving beyond guilt, anger and regret, not by dint of determination and 'triumph of the human spirit', a far too sentimental notion to sustain this tragedy, but by memory and imagination. Imagination is the butterfly that moves him beyond the claustrophobia (diving bell) of his confining guilt, stunted emotions and self-absorption. He can go anywhere and much of the second half of the film consists of flashbacks and fantasies.

Religion has a prominent part in the film as Jean Do receives many messages about people who are praying for him. One of his flashbacks is a memory of a 'dirty weekend' trip with a girlfriend to Lourdes! Even in flashback he holds no desperate hope of a cure.

He retains a postmodern, bemused view of religious activity and prayer. However, his efforts to communicate, a project that seems absolutely hopeless and futile given his limitations and disabilities, are a matter of artistic creation more than they are of human determination and effort. In this sense they are much more than the limited perspective of "the triumph of the human spirit". That he is able to move out of regret and guilt; that he helplessly receives the kindness of strangers and family (cf. The Good Samaritan); that he is enabled to write this moving memoir seems adequate demonstration of 'the power of prayer'. Bauby died within weeks of its publication.