THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY review

You know by now that I keep a detailed database of all the movies I've seen and that are coming out.

The spreadsheets are by year.

Column #1: The movies I've seen this year in rank of my preference of them (from best to worst of the year; my top ten list is all ways complete; currently at #1: Iron Man)

Column #2: Movies currently in release in the order I wish to see them.

Column #3: Upcoming releases in chronological order

Column #4: Movies I didn't see in theater that I hope to see on DVD in order I wish to see them (currently at #1: Son of Rambow -- didn't come to CC)

and finally Colum #5: Movies I didn't see and never want to (a few on the list: Mad Money, How She Move, Meet the Spartans)

Sitting at the top of Column #4 for 2007 for 1/2 a year (bc it didn't come to CC) was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

from imdb.com:

On December 8, 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby - age forty-three and editor-in-chief of the world-famous fashion magazine Elle - was living the "good life" to the extreme when he became the victim of a devastating cerebro-vascular accident that left him in a state of total paralysis, incapable of any verbal communication, in what is known in the medical community as "locked-in syndrome." His mental faculties totally intact as he laid motionless in his bed at the Marine Hospital of Berck-sur-Mer in northern France, Bauby learned to communicate with the outside world using his left eyelid, the only part of his body over which he still had any control. During the next fourteen months, using a communication code developed by his therapist and his publisher's assistant, who transcribed this code, Bauby was able to compose, letter by letter, a lyrical and heartbreaking memoir of his life struggle. Bauby died in 1997, two days after its publication.

It had been so high up on the list bc critics that I trust said it was amazing. The word was that it was a 'life changer', a film so sweeping in his emotional scope that it would rattle around in your life forever: a Shine, a Garden State.

It is always interesting when I competely disagree with critical consensus. My initial impression is that I didn't 'see it correctly.' Back when Pulp Fictioncompletely blew the world away, I remember getting indignant with friends who were ambivalent or dismissive. "You just don't 'get' it," I'd bristle.
Someone said that to me recently on air about Sex in the City (review forthcoming). Who was right then and who is right now? I'm still not sure. Diving Bell simply didn't work for me on the level that, for 1/2 a year or more that I'd been waiting to see it (nestled there at the top of column #4), I'd hoped it would. On the level 'they' say it should. Knowing it is a true story, you're quick to admire Jean-Do's tenacity. Cinematically though it relies on gags like the blurred vision poin-of-view shots. Jean-Do's back story is never fleshed out so that you care about his plight on a personal level.

This film will appeal to many; it just didn't work for me.