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Average User Score: 9 (5 sources)

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alichino

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Even if this had not be a true story I would like to believe that it still would have been a great film. Let's face it, the possibility of such things in the real world terrify us, and by their nature, inherently alter our perceptions. That said:...
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Even if this had not be a true story I would like to believe that it still would have been a great film. Let's face it, the possibility of such things in the real world terrify us, and by their nature, inherently alter our perceptions. That said: visually this masterpiece takes the perspective of the shut in hero. The actors, the players, the very center of the stage, is the camera. We follow his thoughts, he's feelings, while the rest of the world only guesses at what we are seeing. At moments the shear grandeur of the direction and editing are overwhelming, we are privy to the secret life of one who can't communicate and it makes us want to scream at the actors whom have no clue, to race to them, taking them by the ears and leading them, sightless back to the beginning so that they can understand. We become Mr. Bauby. Overtime, this shut in feeling fades, as we, the characters, the camera, finally alter the universe and become part of the whole again.

The metaphors abound, and are beautifully laid before us to examine and re-watch.

If only we all had such butterflies.

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Posted jun 17, 2008 1:06 am pt

• [+] New York Magazine
  
  100
  The film is a masterpiece in which "locked-in" syndrome becomes the human condition.

  by David Edelstein | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New Yorker
  
  100
  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.

  by David Denby | Read Full Review »
• [+] Newsweek
  
  100
  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.

  by David Ansen | Read Full Review »
• [+] Premiere
  
  100
  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.

  by Glenn Kenny | Read Full Review »
• [+] Wall Street Journal
  
  100
  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.

  by Joe Morgenstern | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  100
  Amalric is extraordinary, creating a character literally without moving a muscle.

  by Ken Fox | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Post
  
  100
  You won't have a more viscerally emotional experience at the movies this year.

  by Lou Lumenick | Read Full Review »
• [+] Salon.com
  
  100
  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.

  by Stephanie Zacharek | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Hollywood Reporter
  
  100
  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.

  by Ray Bennett | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  100
  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.

  by Ann Hornaday | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  100
  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.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  100
  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.

  by Andrea Gronvall | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  100
  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.

  by Michael Phillips | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  
  100
  The adjective "inspirational" doesn't do justice to the quality of Schnabel's film.

  by Liam Lacey | Read Full Review »
• [+] Film Threat
  
  100
  Schnabel's film is so steeped in the visual that it is surely the purest of cinema.

  by Matthew Sorrento | Read Full Review »