A deeper look at The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Right from the beginning of this movie I became Bauby (Jean-do). Within seconds I got the sensation that I was no longer sitting in a classroom, but rather laying in a hospital bed looking through Jean Dominque Bauby's groggy eyes of confusion, staring up at hovering doctors. It is Julian Schnabel's genius framing techniques in this scene that allow me to live vicariously through Jean-do and become this character.

All the shots Julian Schnabels films in this scene are point of view shots coming from Bauby's perspective. As he wakes up out of his coma nothing is in focus, in fact I found myself blinking my own eyes repeatedly as if they were Bauby's eyes. After adjusting his eyes a bit more, Bauby is able to focus on a male nurse who seems to be standing next to a few other female nurses. There is very minimal background in this medium shot and quickly, in a blink of Bauby's eye, a female nurse blocks his view of the male nurse and the camera does a close up of this female staring into Bauby's eyes asking him to open his eyes. It is in the these few seconds that the audience begins to feel claustrophobic and frustrated as the doctors and nurses crowd Bauby's face all asking him the same question, "Can you hear me?". It got to the point where I wanted to turn my head away from these people, but of course I couldn't, I was Bauby and I was paralyzed from head to toe. This framing technique makes you focus on what objects are before you since there is nothing else to look at on the screen or if there is it is out of focus. Like Bauby is 'locked in' to his own body, the audience is 'locked in' to the frames.

Throughout all of this chaos Bauby is still blinking his eyes slowly and when he closes them the frame goes dark; nothing is visible except for an extreme close-up of his inner eye lid. Starting from the first close-up of the female nurse up until everyone leaves Bauby's room, the onscreen space is limited to parts of the doctors and nurses faces; Bauby's face is not on-screen until the middle of the film. With this in mind, It seems plausible that Julian Schnabel is intentionally focusing on facial features to fore shadow the importance Bauby's appearance was before his stroke or even contrasting the flashes of light people were to Bauby as the editor of Elle (see the flash back to Elle magazine photo shoot to see this difference).

This scene begins the audience's breath taking journey through the eyes of Jean Dominque Bauby and the unique framing in this scene create this relationship between Bauby and the audience.