Julian Schnabel is a well known painter who has made the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

The movie is an adaptation of the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly written by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the late editor of the French fashion magazine ELLE, who suffered a massive stroke that left him with locked-In syndrome. While locked in, he dictated the book, one letter at a time by blinking his one good eye as an assistant verbally scanned the alphabet (he could hear): once for “yes,” twice for “no.” He died ten days after the book’s publication. I have friends in the disabilities community who have come up with better ways to scan the alphabet but that’s not what this post is about.

Many of the best film directors might have made a fine movie out of this book, each with a different perspective of the triumph of this man’s spirit offset by the frustration of his situation. What makes this movie adaptation work so well is the point of view of a visual artist, Julian Schnabel along with the stunning cinematography of Janusz Kaminski.

In the Carl Sagan book and Robert Zemeckis movie Contact, Jodi Foster, a scientist, is looking out of her intergalactic transporter at a beautiful space scene that she has no words to describe and she says “They should have sent a poet”. Julian Schnabel is the poet and his poetry combined with stellar acting is what makes this movie work.

A piece of this movie shows us what Bauby is seeing through his one good eye: the room, the beautiful women (and there are many), his life in memory, the TV (which he can’t control) while we listen to the voice in his head (in French) narrate, comment, curse people for turning the TV off just when he’s getting into what he’s watching.

Note: a tilt-shift lens was used to imitate the perspective loss that happened when Bauby lost use of his right eye. It works, I noticed the perspective change before I knew how they did it.

You can see some of the visual imagery and watch some teaser videos of pieces of the movie at IMDb (the Internet Movie Database).

Through that one good eye we see a montage of images: an overlay of memories on top of the actual scene and this is where Schnabel shines. Schnabel builds up layers of color and texture in his painting: layers of visual information that stand on their own but also interact with one another, and he’s doing it in this movie as well. The movie has visual layers with the addition of Bauby’s narration pulling the layers together.

When Bauby, played by Mathieu Amalric, listens to a call from his aging father, played by Max von Sydow, he remembers the last time they were together. That simple scene, Bauby shaving his father, is done so well it’s almost worth the entire movie to see it. It’s full of tender love and emotion. However, that scene is just one of many: a flood of memories playing through Bauby’s head while he lies there, locked in.

Schnabel has an eye for channeling emotion through visual images. In order to do this he has to be aware of both an emotional landscape and the possibilities for visually representing it. Traditional filmmakers focus on story and characters, Schnabel is focusing on the visual landscape from a different perspective. The result is stunning.

Jack Nicholson to Helen Hunt: “You make me want to be a better man.” (from the movie As Good as it Gets).

Me to Julian Schnabel: You make me want to be a better photographer.