sunday morning thoughts on a recent film
I saw Le Scaphandre Et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) last week. Directed by Julian Schnabel, it's based on the French best-selling book of the same name written by someone named Jean-Dominque Bauby. Bauby was a middle-aged man, editor of Elle magazine and a total player. But then he suffered a stroke and suddenly could only communicate by blinking his left eye. And through the blinking language, he was able to write this book with the help of a nurse, who was of course cast as a ravishing blonde by the ever virile Schnabel.
I've never been a fan of Schnabel's painting, but this film was sort of amazing. I don't know if it's because movies tend to be more conservative in their visual language than other visual arts, but Schnabel's use of oversaturation and time-stretching seemed fresh and exciting. There's nothing highly experimental about his approach, but it worked.
Most films, or at least ones that get released in the United States, peddle in cheap emotion. Schnabel's latest walks that line carefully, barely avoiding maudlin sentimentality. But in the end, rather than being sentimental, it is just nostalgic and actually quite sad in a very pure way, not clouded by dramatic gesture. And the result is tender yet steely, nostalgic yet unsentimental. Like the best of the Velvet Underground.