The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

In Brief: Julian Schnabel’s third film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2008), continues his apparent fixation with artists who died in their prime. His first films, Basquiat (1996) and Before Night Falls (2000), were about the graffiti artist-turned-neo-expressionist painter Jean Michel Basquiat (dead of a drug overdose at the age of 27) and Cuban poet and writer Reinaldo Arenas (suffering from AIDS, Arenas committed suicide at age 46). Here Schnabel, with the considerable help of screenwriter Ronald Harwood (Being Julia), has adapted the autobiographical work of Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby to film. And while Bauby might be the least important of Schnabel’s trio in terms of his own artistic accomplishment, there’s little question that the film is the most successful of Schnabel’s encounters with cinema to date. None of this is to indicate that Diving Bell is anything like a perfect film. It is, however, a frequently compelling and powerful work that finally becomes a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit — albeit blessedly not of the sweeping-crane-shot and swell-of-lachrymose-music variety. This excerpt was taken from a review by Ken Hanke published on Jan. 23, 2008.