The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Visual artist turned film director Julian Schnabel turns to the real-life story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine who suffered a stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed, a prisoner of the rare "locked in syndrome." Mathieu Amalric plays Bauby in the film, but mostly we're looking at the world through his eyes -- or rather, his left eye, the only part of his body over which he retained control -- which Schnabel transforms into an impressionistic experience. "Most compelling in its attempts to recreate the experience of paralysis on-screen, the gorgeously filmed movie morphs into a dreamlike collage of memories and fantasies, distancing the viewer somewhat from Bauby's consciousness even as it seeks to take one deeper," writes Variety critic Justin Chang. Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Jean-Pierre Cassel and Max von Sydow co-star. The commentary by Schnabel is more impressionistic than informative, riffing lazily on whatever captures his attention as the film unfolds, and the 12-minute "Submerged: The Making of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a conventional featurette filled with standard interview sound bites. More interesting is the shorter "A Cinematic Vision," which explores the visual style of the unique first-person perspective. Also includes Schnabel's 20-minute interview on "Charlie Rose."