Ever since turning in his paintbrush for a camera, celebrity artist Julian Schnabel has been making films that, reasonably enough, are biographies of artists. His 1996 directorial debut, Basquiat (although mostly notable for nailing the feel of New York City in the '80s), was a well-meaning portrait of the fast-living downtown artist who did for graffiti what Warhol did for soup cans. Schnabel followed that up in 2000 with the tougher and more ambitious Before Night Falls, in which Javier Bardem channeled the demons of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas.
Schnabel's new film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (La Scaphandre et le Papillon), is another true story about yet another artist, albeit one whose art resists neat categories. Jean-Dominique Bauby (portrayed in Schnabel's film by Mathieu Amalric) start trends and topped A-lists as the glamorous, jet-setting editor of French Elle. His bon vivant days came to an abrupt end in 1995, however, when the 43-year-old playboy/journalist was felled by a massive stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed, unable to speak or move but — shades of Johnny Got His Gun — fully cognizant.
This rare condition — inelegantly dubbed "Locked-in Syndrome" by Bauby's attending doctors — turned the man into his own work of art, a work-in-progress struggling to find some way to communicate with the outside world. Working closely with a pair of comely speech therapists (Marie-Jose Croze and Anne Consigny), Bauby eventually developed a rudimentary but effective form of communication: blinking his left eye (the only part of him that still worked) to signal a specific letter of the alphabet. Slowly, torturously, Bauby was able to dictate the best-selling memoir from which Schnabel's film takes its name. He died days after the book was published.
It's no exaggeration to say that cinematographer Janusz Kaminski is the real star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Many films have used the camera as a surrogate eye for a protagonist (the most famous example probably being the vintage noir The Lady in the Lake), but Schnabel and Kaminski exploit the technique with a single-mindedness that might have seemed silly if the individual shots weren't so fiendishly ingenious.
The first half of the movie is presented almost completely from Bauby's perspective, with Kaminski's camera distorting the light in ways that appear random but are actually meticulously calculated, pulling images in and out of focus in order to simulate how the world looks to a one-eyed stroke victim awakening from a three-week coma.
The film eventually broadens its perspective, but Schnabel keeps the focus rooted inside Bauby's head, so we only see the man as he was, in memories or in flashback — and occasionally, to his disgust and amusement, in a shiny surface where he catches a glimpse of his reflection. "I look like something that crawled out of a vat of formaldehyde," Bauby's voice-over tells us, with a hint of what sounds like a smirk.
Besides that single working eye — don't even try to resist thinking of the movie as My Left Eye (the preferred title on the Internet, and one I sorely wish I'd thought of) — the only fully functioning aspects of Bauby are his imagination and his memory. Unfortunately, this gives Schnabel license to pepper his film with fantasies and hallucinations, again apparently from Bauby's point-of-view, including repeated shots of an arctic ice shelf crumbling in slow motion and a series of quasi-romantic interludes with women reconfigured as mothers, whores and historical figures. And let's not forget that titular image of a deep-sea diver descending into the soundless, watery depths — Schnabel's clunky symbol for our hero sinking beneath the weight of useless physicality.
But despite the heavy-handed visual metaphors and occasionally turgid rhythms, the script steers clear of melodrama and martyrdom. Bauby progresses from suicidal vegetable to man-with-a-purpose in fine style, impotent and locked-in but driven to tell his story and buoyed by the beauty surrounding him (in addition to the gorgeous speech therapists, the lovely Emmanuelle Seigner is on hand as the mother of his children, while Marina Hands plays the mistress). We know the movie is leading us from tragedy to tragedy, but it's hard to complain in company like this. Schnabel finds something compelling and, from time to time, exquisite, even in the pain.
Fantastic Four
More than 300 people crammed into Centro Ybor's International Bazaar a few weeks ago for the Tampa Film Review's birthday bash, and I was happy to count myself as one of them.
TFR has been around for four years now, which is a major milestone in a local scene where film series have generally been notoriously short-lived. TFR's longevity and expanding audience is in no small part due to co-founders and producers Paul and Peter Guzzo, independent filmmakers themselves, whose can-do attitude and organizational savvy has had an energizing effect on the local film scene.
The Guzzos served as hosts for the fourth anniversary event on Jan. 11, introducing a line-up of locally produced short films selected as the best from last year's screenings and handing out awards named in honor of various Tampa artists and luminaries. The shorts ran the gamut from comedy to horror to documentary to music video (although more than one offering blurred genre lines), and while several movies displayed problems typical to low-budget filmmaking, their technical expertise was consistently high, and the hearts behind them in the right place.
All in all, the evening was a testament to the promise of young filmmakers with the will to succeed, and a splendid time was had by all. Happy birthday, TFR, and many, many more.
The Tampa Film Review is on Fri., Feb. 8, 8-10 p.m., at the International Bazaar in the Centro Ybor complex, 1600 E. Eighth Ave., Tampa. As always, the event is free and open to the public, for more info, e-mail paulguzzo@hotmail.com.
This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2008.