The Butterfly stroke

In theaters Friday: Kung Fu Panda, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
New on DVD: Semi-Pro, Meet the Spartans

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of those films that sat wrapped in a red Netflix envelope on top of my DVD player for three weeks while I whiled away the hours doing other things. I had high hopes and was genuinely anticipating Julian Schnabel’s new film, but for some reason I’d been too busy of late to watch it. What a fool I was!

Based on a true story, Schnabel’s portrait of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle who suffered locked-in syndrome after a paralyzing stroke left him unable to speak, is as moving as its delicious cinematography is arresting. This film is more exhilarating than a movie about a man in a wheelchair has any right to be. Diving Bell was nominated for four major Academy Awards — writing, directing, cinematography, editing — and astonishingly, it didn’t win a single one. That’s a shame because this winner of the American Film Institute’s Audience Award is feel good without being cheesy, bold without being flippant, and sad without being melodramatic. And did I mention the cinematography is going to knock you out? It will. You know it’s a great film when you sit through the entire end credits and then immediately search iTunes for the soundtrack. That’s was I did after watching it this weekend.

Shot by Janusz Kaminski, a Spielberg mainstay who shot Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan among others, Diving Bell takes every opportunity to show us life through Bauby’s wandering, unsteady eye. Kaminski’s hand-held camerawork in these sequences will get you drunk on the feeling of the scenes, which is often the feeling wrapped in Bauby’s unresponsive body. They contrast well with his steady pans and dollies during flashbacks to Bauby’s glittering life before the stroke. I like that Bauby is shown honestly. He’s kind of a jerk before his accident. Remarkably, his stroke helps him to become a better person. But not a perfect person. This isn’t Patch Adams. This is real life. Real life rendered beautifully on film. Do yourself a favor and rent this soon. At the very least you can brush up on your French.

After the lauded thriller that was No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers are set to return to comedy with Burn After Reading. The first trailer is online here, and looks justly bizarre.