The astonishing true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the successful and charismatic editor of French Elle, who, in 1995, suffered a massive, life-altering stroke, leaving him speechless, outraged, restored to full mental clarity but able to move nothing but his left eye—a victim of "locked-in syndrome". "Yet Schnabel's movie, based on the calm and exquisite little book that Bauby wrote in the hospital, is a gloriously unlocked experience, with some of the freest and most creative uses of the camera and some of the most daring, cruel, and heartbreaking emotional explorations that have appeared in recent movies." (New Yorker) Schnabel performs a small miracle by taking on a seemingly impossible subject, and a lead character who must be created literally without moving a muscle, and delivering a film that is "so imaginatively made, so attuned to sensual pleasure, so keyed in to the indescribable something that makes life life, that it speaks of something far more elemental than mere filmmaking skill: This is what movies, at their best, can be." (Salon.com) Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Director. more at thedivingbellandthebutterfly-themovie.com 35mm
2007, color, 1 hour 52 minutes, France/USA