The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

A few weeks ago I was puttering around my apartment watching an episode of "The Charlie Rose Show." The guest, Julien Schnabel, had been invited back for an hour long discussion about his life and career as a modern artist and filmmaker. So I stopped puttering and started paying attention. Schnabel is the director of "Before Night Falls"and the recently released "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", which is now playing at Cinemagic in Squirrel Hill.

I'm not going to make the trip to Squirrel Hill unless one of my friends offers to drive me. So I may have to rent or buy as soon as it's released, because this movie looks and sounds awesome.

If you watched the Oscars last night, you may have noticed that it picked up a few nominations, but "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" cleaned house.

Anyway the movie is about the former editor of French Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby. He travelled, he indulged, he lived a life that most of us can only dream of. Then he had a stroke and developed what's known as locked-in syndrome. It's a state of almost total paralysis and only had the use of one of his eyes. One of his nurses would recite the alphabet, and when she would say a letter, he would blink. That's how this dude wrote his memoirs, by blinking a letter at a time.

The moral of the story? This man, who had once had everything, learned how to use his imagination and appreciate life because he was locked in his own body.

But this isn't a cheesy movie about how you should appreciate life, blah, blah, blah. It has a great script, acting, cinematography...Shall I go on? If anyone sees it let me know what you think. Its an American movie but based on a French novel, so it's filmed in French. Lovely.