Blogical Conclusion

PORTRAIT OF A STILL LIFE

OCT 4, 2008 - THE TRUE STORY OF ELLE MAGAZINE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a stroke that led to a rare form of near-total paralysis called “locked-in syndrome,” isn’t, on the surface, what you’d call a barrel of laughs. With his body weighted down by inaction (like a diving bell) and with only his mind free to flit (like a butterfly) – hence the title of his memoir and the subsequent movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – you’d expect, by the end of the film, to be wrung out and put to dry. And that you certainly are – but while a Hollywood version of this tale might pummel you into submission with a sentimental telling set to a soaring score, demanding your tears at gunpoint, Julian Schnabel’s film earns your emotions, standing back and discreetly observing Bauby’s last days with an altogether remarkable mix of gentle drama, surreal poetry and, most unexpectedly, bone-dry humour.

When the film opens, Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) takes in, with one functioning eye, his surroundings, and exclaims (inside his head, of course, as he cannot speak), “Jesus, a hospital!” It’s one of the worst things that could happen to anyone, to wake up from a three-week-long coma and find yourself in a hospital and realise you’re unable to move any part of the body except the left eye – and just when things couldn’t get worse, they do, as a doctor attempts to reassure Bauby with kind of empty words doctors often employ for reassurance. (“Don’t be alarmed. You’re in a hospital,” the doctor intones, apparently oblivious that the reason for Bauby’s alarm is precisely that he’s in a hospital.) As the film progresses, we note that Bauby has lost little of his mental acuity, so you can only imagine his impatience and frustration at being spoken to as if he were the village idiot.

The doctor proceeds to make a horrifyingly irresponsible guarantee. “But now you’re waking up and you’ll be fine. I promise you.” But Bauby, in his condition, doesn’t take issue with the unknowability of this promise, and neither does he disbelieve the nurse who whispers near his ear, “Everything will be all right, Mr. Bauby. We are here to care for you.” He tells himself, “All right, all right. I’ve had a stroke. My speech will come back. My memory will come back. I’ll be patient. Okay. Okay, I’ll believe you.” But you sense that this belief is going to be short-lived as the next doctor walks in, the neurologist.

Had Bauby not been in his condition, he’d surely have rolled his eyes – left and right – at the new doctor’s preambulary set-at-ease chatter. “Jean-Dominique,” he begins, and then corrects himself. “No, no, your friends call you Jean-Do. So that’s what I’m going to call you. Think of me as your friend.” You can practically sense the physical pain in Bauby’s response, “Sure… doctor.” The physician prattles on, “As a friend I know how difficult this is for you.” And he goes on to detail the full extent of his patient’s condition. “You have what we call ‘locked-in syndrome.’ It will be of no comfort to you but your condition is extremely rare. And we simply don’t know the cause. You don’t smoke and you’re not a heavy drinker. It just happened all of a sudden.”

And then, after revealing to Bauby that his is a freak case, that nothing but a twisted turn of fate resulted in his ending up in this hospital, the doctor offers this jewel of a parting shot. “However, apart from being totally paralysed, you are normal in every other respect… We want you to take it easy for a few days.” It’s a good thing Bauby has a sense of humour, a very healthy sense of humour. It’s not just that his reply carries in it a truckload of sarcasm. (“What do you think I’m doing now?”) A little later, a colleague pays a visit and tries to communicate with Bauby through an exasperating system devised by a speech therapist, and after a few tries, he gives up. “Why did that have to happen to you,” the colleague wonders aloud. “I was in Café de Flore last night. I heard someone say: Did you know that Jean-Do Bauby is now a complete vegetable?” And all Bauby wants to know is this. “And what sort of vegetable? A carrot, a potato, a pickled cucumber?”

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