Hasta La Ideas

Painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel‘s biopic ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ (2007) is a striking visual and emotional adaptation of deceased French Elle editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby‘s memoir.

After suffering a massive stroke Bauby was diagnosed with ‘locked-in syndrome;’ paralyzed and only able to communicate his thoughts through blinking his left eye. He wrote his memoir from a chronic care home with the aid of a translator to whom he would signal the letters of the (frequency) alphabet one at a time.

As Globe film critic Liam Lacey aptly put it, “the film isn’t about feeling better about terrible things, but about cherishing imagination as the force that sustains life.”