The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. It describes what his life is like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called Locked-In syndrome. It also details what his life was before the stroke.
On December 8, 1995, Elle magazine editor-in-chief Bauby suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and left eye. The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, in July and August of 1996. A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome. These events include playing at the beach with his family, getting a bath, and meeting visitors. The French edition of the book was published in March of 1997. It received excellent reviews, sold 150,000 copies in the first week, and went on to become a number one bestseller across Europe. Ten days after the book was published, Bauby died of pneumonia.
The book had touched me very much and I was very intrigued when I saw that the film was coming out because I could not imagine how you could possibly film these memoires.
In the end I was very impressed by the film as it is shot from the victim's perspective which makes you feel his difficulties and his attemps to speak and live.
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