le scaphandre et le papillon
When faced with what I can only assume to be a triumph of the human spirit, I find only further proof that I just might be an empty, soulless husk.
In my continuing quest for reasons to continue with this foolishness that I think of as forced adulthood, and to try to shove residual imagery from recent mistakes out of my head, I suggested to Er that we check out the much lauded Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for the French-resistant). For the uninitiated, the movie is an adaptation of a novel written by a real French guy after he had a stroke leaving him completely paralyzed except for his left eye, who learns to scoff violently in the face of hardship by using his imagination and blinking a lot. The title is a paired simile suggesting that his body encases him like a diving suit adrift in chummy waters but his imagination lets him soar free, you know, like Mariah Carey. I’d first heard of the flick when a classmate recommended it to me several weeks ago, and it seemed like it had the potential to be a beautiful, life-affirming tale about joie de vivre and shit.
As we left the theater, Er offered an initial impression, “Gee, you think the director likes hot chicks?” Truly, it did seem like the filmmaker in question decided to take an inspirational tale about the limitless expanse of human imagination and convert it into a reason to look down the shirts of a seemingly endless succession of attractive French ladies. So much so in fact, that whenever a new character entered that did not fit this categorization, we questioned the casting decisions. Why weren’t all the orderlies hot chicks? And the guys from the phone company? I realized that, if I’d adapted the novel, the hospital would have been filled to bursting with telepathic Japanese schoolgirls. Somehow unable to articulate that precise question to Er, I asked her who she’d want taking care of her if she were in Mr. Bauby’s shoes, to which she replied, “Someone who could cure paralysis.” Well… Yeah.
By way of contrast, my initial reaction upon exiting the theater, my head swimming with images of antiquated undersea apparatus helplessly suspended in murky depths, was “I like the word chum, because it’s funny.” But I don’t want you to think that this movie is bad, or even that I didn’t like it. In fact, I couldn’t have imagined enjoying an hour and a half of people slowly pronouncing letters in French as much as ended up being the case. It’s beautifully made, certainly in a way you’d expect from le cinéma français. In fact, I’m recommending it strongly, because I want to talk to you about whether it had the intended uplifting effect. Because I really did want to feel it, but like Suzumiya Haruhi, I think that just imagining great things isn’t enough for me, and I’m frustrated when I’m confronted with brutal and irritating reality. It could just mean that my imagination isn’t powerful enough to conjure a complete illusion, though.
Maybe I just don’t like books enough. It’s possible that, when faced with such a limited approximation of living, the response of still being able to write a book isn’t going to keep me going. That is to say, if someone stopped me in the street tonight at gunpoint and said, “Write a book or die,” I think I’d have to make the worst mugger in history wait a spell as I pondered the options before me. Additionally, if I had to make someone physically write my book letter by letter as I blinked it out for them, I would feel guilty that I’d wasted so much of that person’s time, knowing that they could have been playing Halo instead. In fact, I feel bad when I think that any of you have wasted your time bothering to read this whole entry. Especially those of you who might be hot chicks.