Letters to the Editor
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The story of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Thank you for trying to tell the story of those who knew Jean-Dominique Bauby. In the end (I've come to believe from my own experience), history frequently boils down to just the memories told by different people. And each side is frequently honest in retelling their memories. But telling the story here of (a) the breaks between what was written, (b) what was filmed, and (c) what each person remembers what happened (not necessarily in that order): that's very important in the long run. Keeping the record is sometimes what matters.
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Confusing blondes
Wait, I thought that the person who took the call from Florence, and who took Jean-Do out on the boat was the translator, not the mother of the children--it made sense to me that they had become intimately close because of the work of transcribing Jean-Do's thoughts. It never occurred to me that that was the "wife," and I thought the movie portrayed their emotional distance, as contrasted with his agonizing desire to be with the girlfriend (though the trip to Lourdes made it seem like they were breaking apart); it is clearly the girlfriend he is seen parting from when he takes his final drive...
Or maybe I just got all the tall, leggy blonds mixed up. Whatever; it all seemed very French, and you're just supposed to let it wash over you.
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Life/Narrative
Just below the surface of this article, there's not much of a story here, is there? Though all the 'real people' are said, repeatedly, to be 'sophisticated,' smart, etc. the central argument comes to an insoluble one that always resides in the following wording: 'based on a true story;' 'from a book by.' What is life seldom takes the shape of what is meant by narrative. Life is fairly shapeless (some would add meaningless); art shapes and forms to deliver a theme, moral, message. Not to expect that to be the case seems, upon quick reflection, rather unsophisticated. All the rest is the chatter of the living over their portrayals in the film.
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Thank you for a wonderful article
A well-written, thoughtful piece of original research in Salon! Feels like old times again...
Ah, the paradoxes of representing the past and of the competing moralities of family life. Wonderful to see the droit moral--the kind of thing I wish we had in the US--end up with results that are fairly repugnant. A lesson that the law cannot solve everything. Wonderful too to be forced to meditate on the rights of children vs. the rights of a celebrity father, and on the ways a mother's self-interests and sense of obligation to protect her children come to be muddled in her own mind. And, above all, to observe the way Bauby's illness intensifies the impulse in his friends (and, I suspect, in readers of the article as well, certainly in me) to protect him and his memory.
Florence seems the most spiritually evolved of us all, realizing that, after what she has been through, how the world thinks of her just isn't important...
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art and karma's a bitch
...and no one ever gets everything they want...
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This doesn't make me want to see the film
It makes me want to read his book. Anything else is he-said, she-said stuff, which is the bane of historians. In the end primary source is all you have to go by.
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Surprisingly, this turned out to be a very interesting article
I started reading thinking that some crybabies are probably again yelling for being misrepresented in a fictionalized piece of work. But the article was truly interesting, and I can see how the film can hurt people. The girlfriend was vilified, there is no question. She is practically the only person portrayed negatively in the entire duration.
On a related note, this is a very good argument for getting married. When people ask me and my spouse why we got married after living together for many years and since we don't want children, I've always answered "to make sure nobody questions our importance in each other's life."
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Bottom Line
Not a documentary, but think of the suffering such massaging causes. Do we care at all about the truth of the story? Isn't it a fundamental change to alter what really happened this much so that it is not the story of Bauby after all? I had wanted to see this, but I think I shall boycott the film in the name of Bauby, in respect for his life as lived.
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Ahem, it's a movie.
It's a work of fiction inspired by a book about a "real life", not a documentary.
Lewis Carroll was nothing like the Anthony Hopkins creation in "Shadowlands."
Elizabeth I would have much to disagree with Cate Blanchette's portrayal in "Elizabeth" and "Elizabeth: the Golden Age". Jim Morrisson and Patricia Kenneally and Pam what's her name in "The Doors" are not "the real" Jim, Patricia and Pam.
I am always amazed by people who walk out of a "based on a true story" film thinking "Wow. The Truth has been revealed to me." Yet many of these same people can confidently tell their children "It's only a movie, sweetheart, it isn't real."
Good art is "truthful" to the story being told, the spine of the work, the messages communicated to the audience by characters, plot, and design. Art is Truthy. It's not The Truth. But there is room in this world for both.
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One minor quibble.
Anthony Hopkins played C. S. Lewis, not Lewis Carrol, in "Shadowlands."
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God, this is silly
Was Henry V really like Shakespeare portrayed him? Falstaff claims he was neither so fat or so foolish as in the play. Nor was Hamlet as indecisive as portrayed, according to friends of the family.
But wait, I refer to great works, one of which this movie is most assuredly not. So, perhaps, when referring to long winded, slow moving, predictable movies that deal with recent events and refer to characters still alive, accuracy is essential. But this was not purported to be a documentary, was it? You see the movie, or read the book, and judge it on its merits without regard to its accuracy, unless it intends to be history, not the case here.
Judged as a movie, on the other hand, I found it excruciatingly dull, sluggishly paced and not all that engaging. I could not develop real empathy for any of the characters other than to think, "I'm sure glad that's not me." Of course, that could be the fault not of the movie but of some defect in my abilities to feel for the suffering of others. I doubt it, I mean it did make its point about the indomitable nature of the human spirit, but that's not a very original one, is it?. Was that lesson worth nearly two hours of hearing somebody recite the alphabet in French?
The main point I took home from the film was how incredible the French health care system seemed to be, what a magnificent hospital that was and how beautiful nurses are in France. If I get sick like that, that's where I want to be for sure. Other than that, when a friend asked me about it I told him that although it seemed to be about a depressing situation and the main character dies at the end, it had a happy ending. At least I was happy that it ended.