The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
Even though I read about this when it came out I didn't see it until now. It's a true story about the editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), who gets paralyzed and can't move anything except his left eye. Yet his brain functions like it should so he becomes trapped inside his own body. He needs to learn an excruciatingly slow way of communication with the help of an assistant reading out letters and him blinking on the right one. Using this method he writes his memoirs, just by blinking his left eye. Now that might sound like a boring movie, but really this is far from boring. It's a strong statement on life itself with a captivating and emotional story. Now the basic idea of a man realising that he has wasted his life and not appreciated the things that really matter is quite old, but still it always works. And that's not all this movie has to offer, there's a lot more to it as we see a man who had everything only to lose it in quite a horrible way. But the movie doesn't dwell in pity, it's quite a hopeful survival story as well. I didn't really like all of the things in this movie as at parts it went a bit too syrup for my taste, but mostly it stayed in the right mood. The cinematography by Janusz Kaminski is simply mind blowing, this is one of the most beautifully shot movies I've seen in a long time. Also the cast is just stellar, even the smaller parts are played to near perfection. So it's a very good movie in many ways and a strong drama well worth watching, even though it does lose it's momentum on a couple of occasions.
80%
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