When Ronald Harwood was asked to write the screen adaptation of Jean Dominique Bauby's memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, he says he was initially filled with terror. He couldn't imagine how to adapt the story of a man who's completely trapped inside himself except for the use of one eye.
Ronald Harwood : "I tried to imagine what it was like to lie in bed paralyzed with only one eye to blink and I almost became claustrophobic at the thought. I knew that the audience would have to go through it and really understand what it was like to be paralyzed. And then this idea came to me that the camera should be the man who's paralyzed."
So the camera blinks and the audience finds itself in a hospital room as Bauby is waking up from his coma.
DOCTOR: "Monsieur Bauby..."
In a confused blur of light and sound, we take in only what Bauby can see and hear. Director Julian Schnabel describes Bauby awakening as a kind of birth.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax)
Julian Schnabel : "What it's like to get born. What it's like to come into consciousness. And what it's like to come out of the dark and into the light."
Writer Ronald Harwood agrees with the birth analogy.
Ronald Harwood : "But it's coming out in a deformed form. I mean it's a terrible thing. He didn't know what had happened to him and he wakes and he sees these people and he realizes he's in the hospital. He doesn't know they can't hear him. Oh it's quite terrifying."
One especially terrifying scene involves the sewing up of Bauby's paralyzed eye. He can still out of it but can't blink to lubricate it. The scenes as scary as anything in a horror film says Julian Schnabel.
Julian Schnabel : "Well this was one of the only two portals this guy had he was being robbed of that too. And for me it was very important for everyone to feel like it's happening to them."
During the shooting of that scene, actor Mathieu Amalric, who plays Bauby in the film, was in another room watching it on a monitor as the lens of the camera, the eye, was sewn up.
Mathieu Amalric : "I could hear what they were saying and I had this mic in front of me and I tried to react on the moment what I was feeling."
This allowed Amalric to react in a spontaneous fashion. His voiceovers and the images on the screen convey Bauby's narrow point of view. Almalric says one of the challenges was creating an inner life for Bauby.
Mathieu Amalric : "I was, for example, always thinking of sexual life, the fact that this man couldn't make love any more, he could only make love with his brain. So that's why often the camera pans on the legs of his wife."
But the film also steps out beyond Bauby's perspective to show how others interacted or failed to interact with him. Amalric says he tried to stay in character even between takes.
Mathieu Amalric : "When it was itching me somewhere on the leg I refused to scratch myself. I tried not to say a word or I tried to like to help the other actors and the kids also and the crew so that they just almost forget me you know, nobody would speak to me any more sometimes if I was thirsty I wouldn't say it and I was just waiting for somebody to tell me, to ask me are you thirsty, and I was just in my head thinking how come they are not worrying if I'm okay or not."
Marie-Josee Croze in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax)
The film also shows the painstaking process by which Bauby composed his memoirs. An assistant would go through the alphabet...
OLATZ: E...S...A...R...I...N...
And then Bauby would blink when she reached the letter he wanted. Writer Ronald Harwood says it was important to convey the unbelievable challenge that Bauby faced.
Ronald Harwood : "Just think of what he went through: he had two or three hours with the person taking the dictation and for the rest of the time while he lay there inert, all he could do was to prepare what he was going to write the next day to think about it in detail what hes going to tell. I wanted it to be not a depressing film I wanted it to be uplifting that in those circumstances someone could triumph."
Actor Mathieu Amalric points to the two things that allowed Bauby to prevail.
Mathieu Amalric : "As he says I have two things left my memories and my imagination, and with that I can go wherever I want and it's true."
Companion viewing: The Sea Inside, Whose Life is It Anyway?, Munich (so you can see Almaric fully mobile)
