Critics Scoreboard
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...
Average Critic Score:
92
(36 sources)
92
(36 sources)
-
100
New York Magazine
The film is a masterpiece in which "locked-in" syndrome becomes the human condition. Read Full Review » -
100
The New Yorker
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 » -
100
Newsweek
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 » -
100
Premiere
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 » -
100
Wall Street Journal
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 » -
100
TV Guide
Amalric is extraordinary, creating a character literally without moving a muscle. Read Full Review » -
100
New York Post
You won't have a more viscerally emotional experience at the movies this year. Read Full Review » -
100
Salon.com
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 » -
100
The Hollywood Reporter
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 » -
100
Washington Post
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 » -
100
Chicago Sun-Times
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 » -
100
Chicago Reader
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 » -
100
Chicago Tribune
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 » -
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The adjective "inspirational" doesn't do justice to the quality of Schnabel's film. Read Full Review » -
100
Film Threat
Schnabel's film is so steeped in the visual that it is surely the purest of cinema. Read Full Review » -
100
Baltimore Sun
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly provides an ecstatic lift for movielovers, despite the tragic subject. Read Full Review » -
100
Charlotte Observer
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 » -
91
Portland Oregonian
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 » -
91
Entertainment Weekly
The most beautiful movie ever made about a man who could only move one eyelid -- almost dangerously beautiful. Read Full Review » -
91
Christian Science Monitor
In a film that overwhelmingly avoids happy-faced pronouncements, this one sticks out. Read Full Review » -
91
The Onion (A.V. Club)
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 » -
90
Slate
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 » -
90
Los Angeles Times
Simultaneously uplifting and melancholy, suffused with an unexpected sense of possibility as much as the inevitable sense of loss. Read Full Review » -
90
The New York Times
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 » -
89
Austin Chronicle
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 » -
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
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 » -
88
Boston Globe
He even calls the majestic view from one of the hospital landings his Cinecittą, after the legendary Italian film studio. The movie is a Cinecittą of the mind. Read Full Review » -
88
Rolling Stone
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 » -
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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 » -
80
Empire
A poignant reflection on what it means to be alive and, visually, a true cinematic experience. Read Full Review » -
80
Variety
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 » -
75
USA Today
Whereas the book was lyrical and moving, the movie is surrealistic and inventive. Read Full Review » -
75
New York Daily News
Take us on an indelible tour through the highest and lowest points of the human experience. Read Full Review » -
75
San Francisco Chronicle
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 » -
50
Time
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 » -
50
Village Voice
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 »
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