The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, French; 2007)
In this life, we are all trapped. The trap could be our doing, by illness, by virtue of our birth or by wrongdoings in life. Because of individual bonds that we build in our lifetime, we are compelled to surrender the fate of nature. It could be easy to live for the moment, leave it all and be indulgent in hedonistic activities, but is it the right thing to do? If so, by whose standards?
This French movie, done by a painter, is set in a palliative hospital built by a picturesque beach of Northern France. We are introduced to Jean-Do, a quadriplegic victim of a basilar stroke, whose contact to the outside world is through his left eye. He cannot verbalise, vocalise or respond to the world in any form.
After the initial self-pity and brooding, he fights back. With a good set of therapists, he is kept alive. As his condition remains the same with no improvement, he decides to detail his every experience in the 'locked-in' syndrome. After learning the art of 'silent alphabet' - through a tedious exercise of winking at the sound of an alphabet-, he 'writes' his autobiography through a transcribe.
He tells himself, he had not lost everything. He still had his memory and imagination to put to use.
He dreams of all the places he had been in his childhood and imagines himself in places he wished to be. His routine would be therapy, the weekly visit by family and reading by a friend.
He was a big time swinging editor of the Elle Magazine with a wife, family and mistress. In the background is his father, an 82-year-old man trapped in his apartment, bogged with dementia and probably phobia. The wife seems to stuck too with his condition. Jean-Do's mistress whom he yearns to meet never turns up, citing the inability to see him in that vegetative state as the reason!
He eventually succumbs to pneumonia.
It is apparently based on real life events. Of course with artistic licence and the right of the story in the hands of the children, the real story had supposedly been altered. The wife was the one who did not care for Jean-Do, according to journalists' interview with the estranged mistress. In her words, the wife was already out of the country when he was sick. Jean-Do had two children in real life but three in the film. The director found all three kids too cute during the audition. Hence, he included all three of them!
In this life, we are all trapped. The trap could be our doing, by illness, by virtue of our birth or by wrongdoings in life. Because of individual bonds that we build in our lifetime, we are compelled to surrender the fate of nature. It could be easy to live for the moment, leave it all and be indulgent in hedonistic activities, but is it the right thing to do? If so, by whose standards?
This French movie, done by a painter, is set in a palliative hospital built by a picturesque beach of Northern France. We are introduced to Jean-Do, a quadriplegic victim of a basilar stroke, whose contact to the outside world is through his left eye. He cannot verbalise, vocalise or respond to the world in any form.
After the initial self-pity and brooding, he fights back. With a good set of therapists, he is kept alive. As his condition remains the same with no improvement, he decides to detail his every experience in the 'locked-in' syndrome. After learning the art of 'silent alphabet' - through a tedious exercise of winking at the sound of an alphabet-, he 'writes' his autobiography through a transcribe.
He tells himself, he had not lost everything. He still had his memory and imagination to put to use.
He dreams of all the places he had been in his childhood and imagines himself in places he wished to be. His routine would be therapy, the weekly visit by family and reading by a friend.
He was a big time swinging editor of the Elle Magazine with a wife, family and mistress. In the background is his father, an 82-year-old man trapped in his apartment, bogged with dementia and probably phobia. The wife seems to stuck too with his condition. Jean-Do's mistress whom he yearns to meet never turns up, citing the inability to see him in that vegetative state as the reason!
He eventually succumbs to pneumonia.
It is apparently based on real life events. Of course with artistic licence and the right of the story in the hands of the children, the real story had supposedly been altered. The wife was the one who did not care for Jean-Do, according to journalists' interview with the estranged mistress. In her words, the wife was already out of the country when he was sick. Jean-Do had two children in real life but three in the film. The director found all three kids too cute during the audition. Hence, he included all three of them!
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