Author Topic: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly  (Read 5358 times)

skjerva

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #10 on: January 14, 2008, 11:39:14 AM »
I've never seen more intrusive CAP codes than in tonight's print of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  I almost asked for a refund.

I never noticed those before.  And now, dammit, I'm sure I'll be seeing them everywhere.  Thanks a lot.

I wouldn't give you a refund for that, by the way.  Not if you sat through the whole movie and complained afterwards.

Yeah, they were all over my print when I saw it, too.  In my old days of management, I also wouldn't have given a refund, though maybe a pass.  sd, I went into TDBatB expecting a disease-of-the-week picture and it didn't strike me as one - perhaps why I liked it so much.  Though I do fear I'll think much less of it if I watch it again; something about my mood and low expectations made for a perfect storm love-fest.
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

pixote

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #11 on: January 14, 2008, 11:47:42 AM »
sd, I went into TDBatB expecting a disease-of-the-week picture and it didn't strike me as one - perhaps why I liked it so much.

I agree with that.  I was petrified it'd be another The Sea Inside, a movie I didn't care for one bit.  But Diving Bell mostly worked for me.  I was surprised that I enjoyed the hospital scenes more than the flashbacks — I had gone in expecting the reverse to be true, partly because I was expecting a more radical exploration of imagination and memory.

I was also surprised that the film had a sense of humor.  That was quite a relief.

The whole Lourdes bit really lost me.

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skjerva

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #12 on: January 14, 2008, 11:55:53 AM »

The whole Lourdes bit really lost me.

pixote

Is it as easy as Lourdes as site of healing and pilgrimage - really, acceptance and caring for others - being a social model?  It seems that one of the key components of the film was that anything could happen to anyone at anytime
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

pixote

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #13 on: January 14, 2008, 12:07:59 PM »
My main question in that scene was, "Why should I care?"  Really, the film never persuaded me to invest in the ins and outs of Bauby's love life.  There seemed to be an assumption that I would care, but I never felt that.  I was much more interested in his interactions with Henriette and his father, and I was open to exploring his relationship with his children more (but that really didn't happen).

I thinking starting things off with that cheeky objectification ("Is this heaven?") might have undercut any interest I might have had in Bauby's romantic entaglements, past and present.

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skjerva

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #14 on: January 14, 2008, 12:14:53 PM »


I agree, but maybe our feeling univested in his love life was also about his lack of feeling; his not caring about the women he was with is seemingly a warning against this kind of "using".
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

pixote

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #15 on: January 14, 2008, 12:22:14 PM »
I agree, but maybe our feeling univested in his love life was also about his lack of feeling; his not caring about the women he was with is seemingly a warning against this kind of "using".

I felt the film in a way romanticized his duplicitious infidelity — making possible, as it did, the high pathos of the "Will you leave the room scene?"  Forcing Céline to repeat Bauby's most painful words was dramatically neat, but in making that melodramatic choice, the film exhibited a cruelty to Céline's character that was in line with Bauby's own cruelty.

Or something like that.

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sdedalus

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #16 on: January 14, 2008, 01:43:01 PM »
Yeah, they were all over my print when I saw it, too.  In my old days of management, I also wouldn't have given a refund, though maybe a pass.  sd, I went into TDBatB expecting a disease-of-the-week picture and it didn't strike me as one - perhaps why I liked it so much.  Though I do fear I'll think much less of it if I watch it again; something about my mood and low expectations made for a perfect storm love-fest.

I wouldn't even give a pass.  If the spots are that annoying, you shouldn't watch the whole movie.

I pretty much agree with you two on the film.  Though I don't know how coherent it is on the subject of Bauby's love life or larger questions of family, religion, and such.
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pixote

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #17 on: January 14, 2008, 01:58:12 PM »
I wouldn't even give a pass.  If the spots are that annoying, you shouldn't watch the whole movie.

I wouldn't have expected a refund or a pass.  (Just to clarify.)

I pretty much agree with you two on the film.  Though I don't know how coherent it is on the subject of Bauby's love life or larger questions of family, religion, and such.

I partly liked how the film just threw some things out there somewhere haphazardly (the freed hostage and other randoms bits and images from Bauby's life), but Schnabel didn't do enough of that to build much poetic resonance with me (let alone coherence).  If we had been awash1 in those images, I would have gone with it more.  But because they were relatively few, I wanted stronger connections and meaning.

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Osprey

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Infidelity and Moral Turpitude
« Reply #18 on: January 18, 2008, 11:16:13 PM »
You forget these people are French.  The infidelity is almost expected, as his father says in the film (and as the Prime Minister of France is famously demonstrating every day).  It was the leaving of the children and the not caring that was the problem.  I give the movie a lot of credit for not having to have a perfect hero - he had flaws, flaws that he realized when there was almost nothing he could do about them.  I was surprised he was never shown apologizing to the mother of his children....

roujin

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Re: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
« Reply #19 on: January 18, 2008, 11:19:49 PM »
It reminds me that I forgot to nominate diving bell and the butterfly for best line.

"Having a mistress is no excuse for leaving the mother of your children; the world has lost its values."