I saw an intriguing movie the other evening: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
The true story that inspired this movie concerns Jean-Dominque Bauby, the editor of "Elle" magazine, who suffered a massive stroke that left him completely paralyzed with a condition called "Locked-in" syndrome. When he came out of his coma, he had recovered all his mental faculties but was completely paralyzed with the exception of his ability to blink his left eyelid. He now lived ''like a hermit crab dug into his rock.'' His therapist developed a method for him to communicate through blinking and he was able to dictate an entire book in this manner.
I thought this movie might be depressing but it really was not. I found it profoundly uplifting. It took Bauby 200,000 blinks to dictate the book. Each word took two minutes. What a heroic act -- to overcome one's self-pity and face reality in such challenging circumstances!

He writes for example: ''One day . . . I can find it amusing, in my 45th year, to be cleaned up and turned over, to have my bottom wiped and swaddled like a newborn's. I even derive a guilty pleasure from this total lapse into infancy. But the next day, the same procedure seems to me unbearably sad, and a tear rolls down through the lather a nurse's aide spreads over my cheeks.''

Bauby describes the life of the mind, now the only life he has left: ''There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas's court ... You can sit down to a meal at any hour, with no fuss or ceremony. If it's a restaurant, no need to call ahead. . . . The boeuf bourguignon is tender, the boeuf en gelee translucent, the apricot pie possesses just the requisite tartness.''

The movie starts as if the viewer is looking through Bauby's eyes, though it later widens out, and it returns to that at the end. The acting and photography are excellent. The director decided to film the movie in the same hospital where Bauby had been treated so we see the scene he describes from the balcony where they wheel him from time to time. Mathieu Amalric as Bauby is extraordinary. In the DVD extra material (which I rarely watch but in this case is interesting) he describes how difficult it was to hold himself completely still when he is not in fact paralysed. There are also nice performances from Anne Consigny as the therapist and Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's ex-partner and the mother of his three children. Max von Sydow gives a tremendous performance as Bauby's father.

This movie explores what it means to be human and how resilient the human spirit can be. I strongly recommend it. The New York Times said the book Bauby managed to write a book as moving as Job's