The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

It is lovely to wrap oneself in a masterpiece every once in a while, especially a recent one. It is right and good to occasionally expose oneself to tangible proofs of mankind’s continued ability to reinvent the world from the bottom up. Dazed and weakened by months of stultifying platitudes from Presidential candidates without Stephen Colbert and others to serve it up funny, I had forgotten that artists still have an audible voice somewhere in our society. And then came December. Thank God for the Oscars. Art is still relevant for another few months thanks to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Yes, yes, the movie’s subject is startling, the acting is superb, the camera work is arresting and the American director had to learn French for the movie. Oh, and it’s on most critics’ short lists for Best Movie Of The Year. That was more than enough to get a snob like me in the theater and keep me there. But this is also one of the best movies I have ever seen, and here is why.

Most movies, indeed most Western dramatic works thanks to the Aristotelian model of playwriting, work hard to illicit an emotional response from their audiences. When they succeed, when the comedy makes us laugh or the tragedy makes us cry, the work is generally deemed good. When it fails, it is generally deemed bad. This constant pressure to feel what they would have us feel, even if that feeling is simply “Wow, this movie is so fun!” is something I often find oppressive, but it is also integral to the audience experience in the Western world and as such it’s part of why we come out in the first place.

About halfway through this film, I became conscious of a strange and wondrous freedom within and without me. I have not felt that way while sitting in a theater….well, ever, as far as I can remember, and it took me most of my walk home to figure out what it was. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly does not impose. It does not assume. It does not illicit. It does not decide. It is therefore not easily categorized by a genre. Despite this, it still manages to be gripping, moving, transfixing and most of those other words that we all bandy about in describing films that are much less than this one. A film in this day and age that somehow manages to change the rules? To me, that is genius. Enjoy.