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Movie Overview
Cast
• Mathieu Amalric
• Emmanuelle Seigner
• Marie-Josee Croze
Director
• Julian Schnabel
MPAA Rating
PG-13 - for nudity, sexual content and some language
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

REVIEWS
NEWS
INTERVIEWS
OTHER
OFCS Rating: 90% Fresh
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4.5/5
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is...a sensational cinematic canvas created by a man who understands the inherent beauty in form, function, and now filmmaking."  PopMatters  Bill Gibron

"An arresting true story and a ravishing visual creation, but the two remain separate entities that do not support one another but get in each other's way instead."  european-films.net  Boyd van Hoeij

B+
"While punishing to watch at times, it's something you can't quite keep your eyes off of."  eFilmCritic.com  Brian Orndorf

3/4
"Butterfly colors inside the lines but it does so with a dandy sense of personal rhythm."  Reel.com  Chris Cabin

4/5
"Butterfly colors inside the lines but it does so with a dandy sense of personal rhythm."  Filmcritic.com  Chris Cabin

B-
"With the help of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, director Julian Schnabel goes so far toward cinematically capturing the claustrophobic condition of his paralyzed and mute protagonist Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) that the artifice of his point-"  ColeSmithey.com  Cole Smithey

" Feeling reduced now to a "zombie," denied what he most wants, sensual pleasures and connections, Bauby is angry and grateful at once. That gap is the movie's most affecting dilemma, unresolved by its many aesthetic effects."  PopMatters  Cynthia Fuchs

5/5
"By delivering Bauby's story in an appropriately straightforward tone, the filmmakers behind "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" prove that engaging stories work best without artificial sweetening."  eFilmCritic.com  Dan Lybarger

4/4
"...a film that's as emotionally devastating as it is engrossing."  Reel Film Reviews  David Nusair

B-
"Left me wondering if Schnabel's arty efforts were really worth the trouble when the real-life story itself was so moving and didn't need such artificial gloss."  Ozus' World Movie Reviews  Dennis Schwartz

A-
"It is amazing that a story as sad as this one inherently is could be so uplifting, but that's exactly what it is."  EricDSnider.com  Eric D. Snider

B-
"Schnabel's visuals are so confident, so moving, that I wished he had truly taken charge rather than being led around by a screenplay that can't cut the mustard."  Film Blather  Eugene Novikov

4/4
"Thanks to wonderful direction, editing, and cinematography, Schnabel convinces us of this perspective with a stroke of brilliance..."  Cinema Crazed  Felix Vasquez Jr.

A
"A remarkably fluent and genuinely uplifting picture about a paralyzed man...no solemn, calculating tearjerker but a marvelously rich and fluid evocation."  One Guy's Opinion  Frank Swietek

5/5
"A classic in the literature of illness brought to the screen with all its creative juices intact, the film salutes the firepower of imagination as a life-giver and a life-sustainer."  Spirituality and Practice  Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

3/4
"The repetitive nature of the screenplay drags a potentially great 80 minute picture way down."  Film and Felt  Gabe Leibowitz

3.5/4
"This is a special motion picture that achieves its higher agenda of doing much more than idly plucking at a few heartstrings."  ReelViews  James Berardinelli

"Imagine a Spike Jonze-Charlie Kauffman-Michel Gondry-style film but with a warm, beating heart instead of cool, detached hipster irony."  Cinematical  James Rocchi

3.5/4
"the style feels utterly organic...rigorous yet unforced, always giving the sense that this is not only the best way, but the only way, to tell this particular story."  Perihelion Journal  Jay Antani

9/10
"Diving Bell, though uncompromising in its own way, comes across as aggressively watchable."  ReelTalk Movie Reviews  Jeffrey Chen

4/4
"In a perfect match of director and subject, artist Julian Schnabel adapts the memoir by late Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby into a compelling and intense look at one man's experience with locked-in syndrome."  Big Picture Big Sound  Joe Lozito

"Haunting and gorgeous."  Planet Sick-Boy  Jon Popick

5/5
"Screenwriter Ronald Harwood turns this first person novel into an intensely first person movie. There are times when it seems impossible that a camera could even be present, the surroundings are so perfectly interior to a man. Amazing."  Cinerina  Karina Montgomery

"The Sea Inside by way of Lady in the Lake."  House Next Door  Keith Uhlich

3.5/5
"A small-scale film on a grand-sized canvas: director Julian Schnabel and his cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, meet the challenge of adapting ... Bauby's 1997 memoir."  Film-Forward.com  Kent Turner

A
"Screenwriter Ronald Harwood has cracked a book largely thought unfilmable and director Julian Schnabel working with DP Janusz Kaminski has created a uniquely visual film about one of the most difficult movie subgenres, the biography of an author."  Reeling Reviews  Laura Clifford

"Even if Schnabel’s films utilize a rolodex as burgeoning as their film’s visual inventiveness, they still do so playfully and with a sense of the fun of moviemaking that so few films of similar lineage display."  Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Leo Goldsmith

3.5/4
"Julian Schnabel's telling of the story is ingenious."  Mark Reviews Movies  Mark Dujsik

A-
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly transcends the uplifting movie-of-the-week story through Schnabel's artful direction and deep empathy."  Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema  Mark Pfeiffer

"[A]s intellectually gripping as it is emotionally compelling..."  Flick Filosopher  MaryAnn Johanson

5/5
"While The Diving Bell is based on Bauby's elegant, well-wrought words, [Director Julian] Schnabel's film is so steeped in the visual that it is surely the purest of cinema."  Film Threat  Matthew Sorrento

5/5
"Paralyzing to watch. At times, you're just as frustrated as Bauby; you want him to communicate, you want other people to understand what he is thinking, and above all, you want him to pull through it."  Bronsonfive  Michael Ferraro

2/4
"A textbook example of a director prizing himself over his material."  Slant Magazine  Nick Schager

B
"Unlike last year's acclaimed film, 'The Sea Inside,' this film does not follow the path to suicide, but rather to a triumph of sorts."  Laramie Movie Scope  Robert Roten

A
"...kind of film that surprises you when the credits roll."  Reeling Reviews  Robin Clifford

"The picture is so beautiful to look at that it's practically buoyant."  Salon.com  Stephanie Zacharek

9/10
"Stylistically engrossing and compassionate, it's a testament to the indomitable human spirit."  www.susangranger.com  Susan Granger

7/10
"By turns terrifying and humane and even funny."  Antagony & Ecstasy  Tim Brayton

4/4
"A striking depiction of human courage."  Oscar Guy  Wesley Lovell

"Click here to see review"  Wolf Entertainment Guide  William Wolf
OFCS Rating: 90% Fresh
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