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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly | 
 enlarge | Director: Julian Schnabel
Actors: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais
Studio: Miramax
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $18.42
You Save: $11.57 (39%)
New (45) Used (16) Collectible (2) from $9.98
Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 720
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 112 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: 5596703
UPC: 786936750119
EAN: 0786936750119
ASIN: B00104QSOC
Theatrical Release Date: December 25, 2007
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, FACTORY SEALED, WE GUARANTEE OUR PRODUCTS, SHIPS SAME OR NEXT DAY
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Product Description
From Miramax Films acclaimed director Julian Schnabel and the screenwriter of THE PIANIST comes a remarkable and inspiring true story about the awesome power of imagination. Experience the triumphant tale of renowned editor Jean-Dominique Bauby a man whose love of life and soaring vision shaped his will to achieve a life without boundaries. You'll soon discover why David Benby of "The New Yorker" calls THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY "nothing less than the rebirth of the cinema."System Requirements:Running Time: 112 minutes Language: English / Spanish / French Subtitles: English / French / SpanishFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/TRUE STORY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 786936750119 Manufacturer No: 5596703
Amazon.com
The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralyzed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an oustanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humor and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown painter, but he's crafted an intimate visual poem, a humble sonata about life at its most fragile. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
 Sensitive film, extraordinary story August 20, 2008
Nirmal Ghosh (Thailand)
Quite a feat to translate such a difficult story into film, and it works. This is a sensitive film of an extraordinary story at once a lesson in life and death, as well as poignant and inspirational - and handled without ever becoming cloying or maudlin.
Very moving August 20, 2008
Jenna Sibley (Chico, CA)
Director Schnabel turned a most depressing subject into a beautiful story about will and compassion. The scenery is beautiful and the filming extraordinary. That the director is an artist and had a fear of dying adds to the deep undertones. No wonder it has received so many awards. Not recommended for small children.
 very accurate discription of a stroke August 17, 2008
Johnny & Riza (Lafayette. Colorado)
I had a very bad stroke three years ago. I even had surgery. I loved this move. The only differance betweem me amd him was modern medicine. It brought back many memories. Very accurate. Very inspirational. I still go to therapy and I still have a limited range of motion. I can now touch my ear with the effected hand/arm. It made me realize how much I can do.
Never received it August 11, 2008
Lourdes De La Huerta (Miami, FL)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had forgotten about this order. I never received it.
Lourdes
A brilliant, moving film August 10, 2008
Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY is one of the move moving films that I have seen in some time. The film tells the true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby's devastating stroke, which left his mental faculties completely unimpaired but left him physically unable to move apart from blinking his left eye. The part of Bauby, or Jean-Do as he is called, was originally going to be played by Johnny Depp (he had to pull out because of conflicts with the PIRATES films), but as fine as he is as an actor it is hard to imagine that he would have been finer than Mathieu Amalric. Though there are many flashback scenes where Amalric is able to use his entire body, most often he is able to do nothing but blink his eye. Lines from T. S. Eliot kept running through my mind as I watched Amalric bring his character to life -- "Paralyzed force, gesture without motion." Yet Amalric is able to bring a surprising amount of expressiveness to his role, partly aided by glasses that seem to magnify his right eye, the only part of his body that he is able to move.
I have not read the book upon which the movie is based, a novel that was painstakingly dictated by Jean-Do as his aide would read out the alphabet and he would blink when she would reach the correct letter. By any standard of human achievement, the writing of the book has to stand as one of the most remarkable accomplishments in our culture. One can hardly imagine managing desiring to stay alive under such conditions, let alone write a book.
The use of the camera is in the film is remarkable. For quite a while at the beginning all camera work is from the first person, seeing pretty much what Jean-Do would have seen. Once that first person perspective is broken it moves back and forth from that perspective to that of a disembodied outside observer. Especially in moving from the flashback scenes to those of Jean-Do as a paralytic, the shifting in viewpoints reinforces the sense of his entrapment in his own body.
The film further establishes Julian Schnabel as one of the finest filmmakers active today. His resume is tiny, but all three of his feature films make for riveting viewing. At the rate at which he works (his main career has been as a painter based out of New York), he make only get around to making 2 or 3 more films, but I'll be anxious to see anything and everything he makes.
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