The Diving Bell and the Butterfly


I could have sworn I reviewed this but I can't find it here or on Beautiful Feet 1.0... Stumbled upon it and as soon as I saw and heard the E-S-A-R-I-N-T-U-L..., I remembered this wonderful film and watched it all again. Beautiful on so many levels. I appreciated it more this time, now that I knew more about director (2017) Julian Schnabel's work(s). 
An absolutely heartbreaking and at the same time inspiring movie about the true mid-life trauma suffered by Jean Dominique Bauby, chief editor of Elle magazine in France in the 90s. Excellent performances by all, including Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Anne Consigny and (2013) Les Beaux Jours' Patrick Chenais (who I know I reviewed but can't locate that post either. Grr.). 
After the movie, I read some background of the events from his children's points of view, which was interesting but should not be investigated til after viewing. One amateur reviewer described it as "cerebral," which I guess it is. I just like to think of Schnabel's treatment of the content as simultaneously cool and fucked up/occasionally trippy. 
As for the subtitles, you can tell they were done by a professional (probably one of my colleagues in the SUBTLE, the Subtitlers' Association) because they're pretty spot on and not like those by the many non-professional Netflix preferred vendors (usually not SUBTLErs), since it's 10 years old.
It brought to mind Me Before You (2016), Intouchables (2011), The Theory of Everything (2014) and The Sessions (2012). Which brings to mind that all of these but Intouchables represent men with handicaps being supported by strong women. Hmm.
Un bon film! Catch it while it's on Netflix.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But There IS Joel Kinnaman...

Image
ALT: Joel Kinnaman as Tak Kovacs in a dark, strange world, wearing a blue coat and shirt; he's looking around in wonder. Oh god, I didn't know whether I could get past the first episode: I love dystopian futures, but this seemed hackneyed...  Altered Carbon has the feel of sometimes The Hunger Games , sometimes Harry Potter , often Repo! The Genetic Opera or Gotham City or Narcopolis .There's martial arts, comic booky treatments, digital effects and story content. Some of it is dumb, and the names for things in the future are lazy: The Array is the internet, a sleeve is a host, ONIs are basically smartphones, Poe is like TNG's Data, Meths are the 1%, and paying my chip-implanted fingers is technology that's already here. The "strong, independent woman cop" is the lamest character attempt/trope out there, and the actress is terrible. The producers seem to be trying to appease audiences on every front rather than trying to make a solid, consistent produ...
Read more

What I Didn't Like About "The Martian"

Image
Photo: http://codices.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/machr.jpg I just finished ripping through the 369-page  The Martian by debut novelist Andy Weir, self-confessed science nerd. This year, I have read more fantasy/sci-fi than ever, and several books have been about scientific disasters and/or space, but I tend to go for the more blockbuster and less techie stories, having practically failed science every year after intro biology. We won't even discuss maths. I'm a luddite, and I don't want to be scratching my head during my precious escapism hours. So books that go into thrust and scientific measurements and velocity and the nightmare-inducing periodic table of elements are a little intimidating for me. The story, if you haven't heard yet about the book or the upcoming Matt Damon movie, is about an astronaut named Mark Watney who gets stranded on Mars after a mission mishap. That's all I'll say in the interest of avoiding spoilers à la "Who Shot...
Read more

Featured CONTACT Exhibition

One of the CONTACT Festival exhibitions I hope to get to is that of Osheen Harruthoonyan, which is taking place at Pikto. You can preview some work here . Looking forward to that and many other shows. Ck out the CONTACT directory magazine or view the info at their guide page .
Read more