The Sign of the Butterfly in Art

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

When physical movement is lost, the imagination

takes flight traversing the past and the present.

Jean Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of Elle, had

a cardio vascular stroke which left him paralyzed from

head to toe. His diagnosis was “locked in syndrome.”

The only movement he had was the ability to blink his

left eye. Through the process of blinking to the letters

recited by a transcriber, he was able to narrate his book

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Bauby’s book was made into a film in 2007 by director

Julian Schnabel. The film considers the limitations of

the boundary of our skin and the impulse to

communicate beyond those limitations. Sophocles

notion of the butterfly as Psyche or soul is rendered

nearly tangible in this film. Bauby, and then Schnabel,

address the strength of the mind and the

power of the imagination.

We see images of fluttering butterflies only once in the

film. Yet time and again we feel the essence of the

creature through representation of weightlessness,

freedom and hope. These sensations succinctly

counteract being pulled under water, sinking while

confined within the physical limitations of the diving bell.

Bauby, whose story had become popular in Europe, had

turned a negative event into something positive. It has

come to personify a transcendence and power of

consciousness, all of which is a challenge to depict in

film, yet has been successfully accomplished.

Schnabel won best director of the year at the Cannes Film

Festival. The film was nominated in several categories at

the 80^th Academy Awards. Ronald Harwood won the Adapted

Screenplay category at the British Academy of Film &

Television Arts in 2007. The film garnered two Golden Globe

awards.