The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film)
| The Diving Bell and the Butterfly | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Julian Schnabel |
| Produced by |
Kathleen Kennedy Jon Kilik |
| Screenplay by | Ronald Harwood |
| Based on |
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Paul Cantelon |
| Cinematography | Janusz Kamiński |
| Edited by | Juliette Welfling |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by |
Pathé (France) Miramax Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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112 minutes |
| Country | France United States |
| Language | French |
| Budget | €10.8 million |
| Box office | $19.8 million |
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French: Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) is a 2007 biographical drama film directed by Julian Schnabel and written by Ronald Harwood. Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir of the same name, the film depicts Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. Bauby is played by Mathieu Amalric.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the César Awards, and received four Academy Award nominations. Several critics later listed it as one of the best films of its decade.
The first third of the film is told from the main character's, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), or Jean-Do as his friends call him, first person perspective. The film opens as Bauby wakes from his three-week coma in a hospital in Berck-sur-Mer, France. After an initial rather over-optimistic analysis from one doctor, a neurologist explains that he has locked-in syndrome, an extremely rare condition in which the patient is almost completely physically paralyzed, but remains mentally normal. At first, the viewer primarily hears Bauby's "thoughts" (he thinks he is speaking but no one hears him), which are inaccessible to the other characters (who are seen through his one functioning eye).
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