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Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The

Universal acclaim
Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 80 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Ronald Harwood
Directed by: Julian Schnabel
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 30, 2007
DVD: April 29, 2008
Running Time: 112 minutes, Color
Origin: France / USA
Language(s): French / English
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for nudity, sexual content and some language
Starring Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, and Max von Sydow
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the remarkable true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of French Elle, who believes he is living his life to its absolute fullest when a sudden stroke leaves him in a life-altered state. While the physical challenges of Bauby's fate leave him with little hope for the future, he begins to discover how his life's passions, his rich memories and his newfound imagination can help him achieve a life without boundaries. (Miramax Film)
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
New York Magazine David Edelstein
The film is a masterpiece in which “locked-in” syndrome becomes the human condition.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Schnabel’s movie, based on the calm and exquisite little book that Bauby wrote in the hospital, is a gloriously unlocked experience, with some of the freest and most creative uses of the camera and some of the most daring, cruel, and heartbreaking emotional explorations that have appeared in recent movies.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Schnabel, screenwriter Ronald Harwood and Spielberg's great cinematographer Janusz Kaminski have found a way to take us inside Bauby's mind--his memories, his fantasies, his loves and lusts--transforming a story of physical entrapment and spiritual renewal into exhilarating images.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Every performer in the international cast -- Seigner, de Bankole, von Sydow (magnificent as Bauby's father), and the late Jean-Pierre Cassel to name but a few -- completely disappears into each of their roles, which I think is as much a testament to Schnabel's talents as to theirs.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The movie has done what those who've cherished the book might have thought impossible -- intensified its singular beauty by roving as free and fearlessly as Bauby's mind did.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Amalric is extraordinary, creating a character literally without moving a muscle.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
You won't have a more viscerally emotional experience at the movies this year.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The picture is so imaginatively made, so attuned to sensual pleasure, so keyed in to the indescribable something that makes life life, that it speaks of something far more elemental than mere filmmaking skill: This is what movies, at their best, can be.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Director Julian Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood have performed a small miracle in adapting for the screen Jean-Dominique Bauby's autobiography The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Thanks to Bauby's courageous and honest writing, and Schnabel's poetic interpretation, what could have been a portrait of impotence and suffering becomes a lively exploration of consciousness and a soaring ode to liberation.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
At the end we are left with the reflection that human consciousness is the great miracle of evolution, and all the rest (sight, sound, taste, hearing, smell, touch) are simply a toolbox that consciousness has supplied for itself.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
he Diving Bell and the Butterfly fuses experimental techniques with a highly accessible and sometimes humorous narrative; it’s deeply personal yet universal in its humanism.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It is wonderful: a rhapsodic adaptation of a memoir, a visual marvel that wraps its subject in screen romanticism without romanticizing his affliction. It left me feeling euphoric.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The adjective “inspirational” doesn't do justice to the quality of Schnabel's film.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Matthew Sorrento
Schnabel's film is so steeped in the visual that it is surely the purest of cinema.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly provides an ecstatic lift for movielovers, despite the tragic subject.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Moviegoers are turned off by depressing topics, yet "Diving Bell" supplies something film fans claim they want: pure escapism, the chance to experience extreme sensations virtually none of us will ever have.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Mathieu Amalric, best known as an arms dealer in "Munich." In a role that strips him entirely of vanity and denies him virtually every expressive tool, Amalric makes a genuinely touching impression.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The most beautiful movie ever made about a man who could only move one eyelid -- almost dangerously beautiful.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
In a film that overwhelmingly avoids happy-faced pronouncements, this one sticks out.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
Schnabel's sleepy, drifty, at times morbidly funny film tackles something more ambitious, by getting into the head of someone who's trying to get out of there himself.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
With the help of brilliant French actor Mathieu Amalric, Spielberg's longtime cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist), Schnabel has made a marvelous film that uses images with as much grace and flair as Bauby used words.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Simultaneously uplifting and melancholy, suffused with an unexpected sense of possibility as much as the inevitable sense of loss.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
In his memoir Mr. Bauby performed a heroic feat of alchemy, turning horror into wisdom, and Mr. Schnabel, following his example and paying tribute to his accomplishment, has turned pity into joy.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
Could easily have tipped over into melodrama, but Schnabel is too much an artist to let that happen; he realizes that in order to make his hero truly substantial, and not just sympathetic, he has to present him as an ordinary man making the best of extraordinarily lousy circumstances. By doing so he’s created a character we not only marvel at but identify with.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
The film is more than laborious eye-blinking - it's also dazzling visually, its potent imagery conjured by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. But finally, Diving Bell is about something imperceptible: consciousness.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
He even calls the majestic view from one of the hospital landings his Cinecittà, after the legendary Italian film studio. The movie is a Cinecittà of the mind.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The movie will wipe you out. Schnabel's previous two films (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) also focused on artists. But this is his best film yet, a high-wire act of visual daring and unquenchable spirit.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The movie never falls into gushy moments of inspiration and Schnabel never tries to manipulate any particular response from the audience. We're left to make of it what we will.
Read Full Review >Empire Alan Morrison
A poignant reflection on what it means to be alive and, visually, a true cinematic experience.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
Most compelling in its attempts to re-create the experience of paralysis onscreen, gorgeously lensed pic morphs into a dreamlike collage of memories and fantasies, distancing the viewer somewhat from Bauby's consciousness even as it seeks to take one deeper.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Whereas the book was lyrical and moving, the movie is surrealistic and inventive.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Take us on an indelible tour through the highest and lowest points of the human experience.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
By the end, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly achieves a victory over difficult material, but celebrating that fact doesn't preclude recognizing the story is not a natural for movies and remains an uneasy match.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
Still, somewhat shame-faced I have to admit that at some point in the film I began to hear a subversive voice whispering in my ear, and what it was saying was, "Could you blink a little faster, pal?"
Read Full Review >Village Voice Scott Foundas
Far too often, though, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly feels grotesquely calculated, especially the more Schnabel ratchets up the inspirational platitudes of exactly the sort that Bauby--who maintained an acerbic sense of humor about his situation until the very end--would have despised.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 80 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Armin R gave it a9:
The highly rated Diving Bell and the Butterfly deserved more in Cannes film festival and Oscar Academy.
b da gave it a10:
Schnabel nailed it.
Cindy A. gave it a10:
I rented this 3 times and always talked myself out of watching it because I didn't want to be depressed. I am so glad I experienced this. I didn't feel depression. I'm not quite sure what I felt. But i saw and felt things I never have before. During the movie I found my body to be still and my breathing barely audible. It just does something to you. The direction, camera work, the script...all amazing. Absolutely stunning.
Jimmy S gave it a10:
Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) has given us Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” This late editor of French Elle wrote the small and remarkable book of the same name after suffering a massive stroke at the age of forty-three. After the stroke, he could move nothing except blink his left eye. Yet his mind was as lucid and humorous as ever, and those are attributes that can be equally applied to Schnabel’s wonderful adaptation. The movie is beautiful, funny, sexy (yes, it’s a movie about a paralyzed man), even groundbreaking and emotionally overwhelming. There is a wonderful scene that takes place before Bauby had the stroke, which tells of how repulsed he is by his mistress’ purchase of a glowing Virgin Mary statue. Just a few scenes before this flashback, Bauby, post-stroke, is in a church, still objecting to faith. His voice inside his head protests in an ever-so-cute way, full of humor and all-together lacking in bitterness. The realization of Bauby as a man who fully accepts the fact that some people are just unlucky—his opposition to asking silly questions like, “Why me, God?”—is the expression of one of the most mature psychological states of mind in cinema in years. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” must be seen. For God’s sake, go watch it.
Randy M gave it a10:
Utterly stunning. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a beautiful and powerful experience that should not be missed.
Evan D. gave it a10:
The perfect film. visually stunning and perfectly acted.
Gary R gave it a10:
Filmaking at its best...you feel as if you are inside of the main character experiencing all of his suffering. The scene where the doctor sews his bad eye shut is so unnerving that you want to look away but cannot. This film should have been nominated for best picture...it's that good.
