Iron Butterfly

There are a handful of similarly affecting moments scattered throughout, including two scenes featuring Max von Sydow as Bauby’s 92-year-old father, and they work in a way the rest of the film doesn’t because they’re the ones in which Schnabel (who himself has five children from two marriages and cared for his own nonagenarian father toward the end of his life) seems to be commuting with his subject on a particularly personal level. Too often, though, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly feel grotesquely calculated, especially the more Schnabel ratchets up the inspirational platitudes (“Hold fast to the human inside of you and you’ll survive” is the advice of one of Bauby’s visitors) and pours on a self-pitying musical score (by ex–Wild Colonials member Paul Cantelon) of exactly the sort that Bauby, who maintained an acerbic sense of humor about his situation until the very end, would have despised. The inelegant yet functional name of Bauby’s rare condition was “locked-in syndrome,” and here too there seems to be the raw materials for a vastly more intriguing movie, trapped beneath the surface of a boilerplate Hollywood weepie about terminal illness as a surefire path to personal redemption. It’s like a butterfly with lead for wings.

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY | Directed by JULIAN SCHNABEL | Written by RONALD HARWOOD, based on the book by JEAN-DOMINIQUE BAUBY | Produced by KATHLEEN KENNEDY and JON KILIK | Released by Miramax Films | The Landmark