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Yulia's Reviews > The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
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I just saw the movie adaptation last Friday, the day before my father-in-law passed away: perhaps not the best time, but I'm the type of person who refuses to get myself out of my mood, but prefers to dwell on my feelings. I actually found the movie much darker than the book itself, which I read when it first came out in English. As the book's from his perspective, we are spared the experience of the silence and loneliness he is encased in. The movie, in contrast, depicts just how terrifying and isolating locked-in syndrome is, how claustrophobic and powerless the person who is afflicted becomes despite no deficit in cognitive ability, how he must have yelled inside only to appear silent and unresponsive. Truly a living hell. So it was interesting to compare the vivid, active, articulate world he presents us with in his book with the walls he faced in connecting with others who simply lacked the patience to "listen" to him and see he was still so much present.
Perhaps the most powerful contrast in the movie, which I don't remember but may be depicted in the book, is the polar responses of the mother of his children, who visited him almost every week and loved him despite all the pain he'd caused her, and his lover just before his stroke, who never had the courage to visit him in his enfeebled state, but said she was always "with him" in spirit, though he was able to communicate to her, "chaque jour j'attends": each day I wait. I knew then that I would choose to be the kind of person who was there for those I loved despite my fears and stress, not the one who was there in spirit but not in person. The lover was a coward. Her selfish desire to cling to the healthy Bauby was, for me, inexcusable. Se behaved as if he'd already died, when this book clearly shows he was perhaps never more lucid about his connection to the world.
Perhaps the most powerful contrast in the movie, which I don't remember but may be depicted in the book, is the polar responses of the mother of his children, who visited him almost every week and loved him despite all the pain he'd caused her, and his lover just before his stroke, who never had the courage to visit him in his enfeebled state, but said she was always "with him" in spirit, though he was able to communicate to her, "chaque jour j'attends": each day I wait. I knew then that I would choose to be the kind of person who was there for those I loved despite my fears and stress, not the one who was there in spirit but not in person. The lover was a coward. Her selfish desire to cling to the healthy Bauby was, for me, inexcusable. Se behaved as if he'd already died, when this book clearly shows he was perhaps never more lucid about his connection to the world.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
January 1, 1998
–
Finished Reading
March 26, 2008
– Shelved
April 19, 2008
– Shelved as:
me-moirs
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That's true, it certainly becomes a she-said/she-said situation in such a circumstance where there are no other eye witnesses, and the mother of Bauby's children was likely consulted in many of the scenes of the movie that were not narrated in the book. But the movie did remind me of a friend's recent experience, when an aunt she was close with died and her pseudo-boyfriend said he couldn't be there for her because seeing her in distress would have stressed him out too much. And I never wanyt to be like that, no matter how difficult it is to be there for Frank. Partners don't get to choose when they're there for each other, in my notion of how things should be.
The film is not true to the facts, yes, but it is an extremely compelling film nonetheless.Here is a Salon piece about the making of the film and how Bauby's wife played a major role in the form it took.
As to the book versus the movie, as I recall, the wife and girlfriend only make brief appearances. I don't there's enough to judge either of the women, especially since we don't know how deep the relationship with the girlfriend actually was. Supposedly, the author was a womanizer prior to the stroke so she could have been just the fling of the moment.