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Review of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
I was surprised to discover that "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a religious film. I don't mean that it affirms any dogmatic truths, because it certainly does not. But religion, specifically French Catholicism, is a subtext, de-ployed subtly through recurring symbolism, and overtly in the form of a visit to church and the shrine at Lourdes. The film, which depicts the struggle of a man to cope with the loss of movement and speech, thus invites speculation as to the effectiveness of religion as a pro-vider of meaning in the face of trauma.
While driving in a new convertible with his son, 42-year old Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of the fashion magazine Elle, suffers a sudden stroke. It leaves him paralyzed and speechless, eventually able to communi-cate only by blinking his left eye to select letters, as exceedingly patient therapists, family members, and friends recite the alphabet to him. To this list of care-providers is added an amanuensis, the representative of a Parisian publishing house, who helps Bauby to compose a memoir of his experience of "locked-in syndrome."
The story is true. Bauby himself died in 1997, only days after his memoir was published. The film is the work of the Brooklyn-born expressionist painter turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel. His conjuration of Bauby's reality is stunning. A voiceover, Bauby's reflective inner mono-logue, is juxtaposed with the specter of his outward diminishment, effectively conveying the anguish of an active mind that has been robbed of direct conversation with the world. Schnabel also portrays the two symbols that Bauby derived to express the agony and ecstasy of his state. The diving bell is an antique metal diving suit sinking through murky water, with an air tube snaking to the surface, and a glass-windowed helmet through which we glimpse the writhing horror in Bauby's face. The butterfly is the delicate angel providing the wings for his flights of sensual fantasy.
Not having read the book, I can't say whether the preponderance of Christian symbolism is of Schnabel or Bauby himself. As the diving bell descends through the water its arms are spread at a wide horizontal. Thoughts of the crucifixion are unavoidable. This symbolism is made explicit in the silver crosses hung around the necks of the women who tend to Bauby, his attractive thera-pists and estranged wife, who, together with his young daughter, assure him that he is in their prayers. Taken to church by one of his nurses, Bauby blinks his refusal of communion. The priest's suggestion that he seek a miracle at Lourdes prompts an extended flashback to a prior trip with his lover, an ambivalent expedition that featured a statuette of the Virgin Mary with a flashing red halo reminiscent of the old Times Square as much as anything holy.
What are we to make of all this religion, and of a story so redolent with passions, longings, and archetypes that we often associate with faith traditions? In the face of suffering, Bauby, the erstwhile Don Juan, experiences a futile remorse, prevented by his condition and the con-tinued longing for his absent lover from seeking the forgiveness of his wife. Caretakers, who, like the wife he has abandoned, rise above themselves to seek his com-fort and consolation, surround him. In a flashback, we witness Bauby shaving the face of his elderly father, played by the legendary Max von Sydow. We see their faces, the father and the son, consubstantiated in the living room mirror. We realize that the son's hands, holding the brush and razor, have become an active part of his father's frail body, and that this is the definition of selfless love that the film suggests. And we see Bauby himself as a solitary figure undergoing an excruciating physical torment, which inspires within him a powerful and captivating manifestation of the life force.
But institutional religion is refused. The communion wafer goes uneaten. The Madonna of Lourdes is a tacky tourist icon, sold by a huckster who assures each pilgrim it is unique, even as he orders another up from the stockroom. The camera lingers strangely on a shot of the priest in his study, removing the soutane to reveal the ordinary corpulence of his human body. A friend of Bauby's comes to visit, a man with unruly white hair and a haunted face who spent four years as a hostage in Beirut. His advice to Bauby, a hostage in his own body, is to hold on to his humanity.
Bauby does claim to experience a miracle. In a moment of despair, he regains the ability to sing. We hear simul-taneously the clear melody of his inner voice and the grunts through which it issues outward to his delighted audience. This is of a piece with his larger miracle, the power of his imagination to dream and compose. It is a power that shares its origins with the desire for food and the warm company of women that he can no longer indulge, with the love that he feels for his father and his children. It is a quest for the continuation of his joy in living, his humanity, and it draws people to him. It may flow at times into what we call religious sentiments and symbols, but beside it the trappings of organized religion seem coldly inhuman.
The film leaves us with the puzzling suspicion that imagination, rather than faith, is the power that sancti-fies life. That life provides meaning to religion, and not the other way around.
It prompts those of us who live in relationship to faith traditions to ask ourselves: Does this fit with our own experience? Is the relationship between religion and the sensual imagination necessarily an either/or proposition? Does our reliance on sanctioned religious rites and sym-bols ever hinder our experience of a less grand, but perhaps more palpable salvation? And how can we cope with trauma, whether as caregivers or in our own direct experience, in such a way that recognizes the holiness of both responses?
Reviewed by Benjamin M. Weiner, ICJS Seminary Intern
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