The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The first third of the film is told from the main character's, Jean-Dominique Bauby, or Jean-Do as his friends call him, first person perspective. The film opens as Bauby wakes from his three-week coma in a hospital in Berck-sur-Mer, France. After an initial falsely positive description from one doctor, a neurologist explains that Bauby has locked-in syndrome, an extremely rare condition in which the patient is almost completely physically paralyzed, but remains mentally unchanged. At first, the viewer primarily hears Bauby's "thoughts" (he thinks that he is speaking but no one hears him), which are inaccessible to the other characters (who are seen through his one functioning eye). A speech therapist and physical therapist try to help Bauby become as functional as possible. Bauby cannot speak, but he develops a system of communication involving blinking his left eye as his therapist reads a list of letters; with this process, Bauby spells out messages one letter at a time. Gradually, the film's restricted point of view widens, and the viewer begins to see Bauby through scenes from his past as well as via the perspectives of those around him. The film shows a visit to Lourdes and conveys Bauby's fantasies about beaches, mountains, the Empress Eugénie and an erotic feast with one of his transcriptionists. We learn that Bauby had been editor of the popular French fashion magazine Elle, and that he had a deal to write a book reimagining The Count of Monte Cristo from a female perspective. He decides that he will still write a book, using his slow and exhausting communication technique. A woman from the publishing house with which Bauby had the original book contract takes dictation. The new book describes his current life, trapped in his body, which he sees as being suspended in murky water within an old-fashioned deep-sea diving bell with brass helmet, which is called a scaphandre in French. But those around him describe his still-vibrant spirit as a butterfly. The story of Bauby's writing is juxtaposed with his recollections and regrets prior to his stroke. We see his three children, their mother, his mistress, his friends, and his father. He encounters people from his past whose lives bear similarities to his own "entrapment": a friend who was kidnapped in Beirut and held in solitary confinement for four years, and his own 92-year-old father, who is confined to his own apartment, because he is too frail to descend four flights of stairs. Bauby eventually completes his memoir and hears the critics' responses. He dies of pneumonia ten days after its publication. The closing credits are accentuated by reversed shootings of breaking glacier ice (the forward versions are used in the opening credits), accompanied by the Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros song "Ramshackle Day Parade".

Plot from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film)CC BY-SA 4.0