Julian Schnabel's Cinematic Eye

By Tom Clavin

Mathieu Amalric and Marie-Josée Croze

It would seem impossible to make a movie about a man who, after suffering a stroke, is totally immobile with the tiny exception of being able to blink one eye. That, it turns out, is exactly the challenge Julian Schnabel set for himself in making a film that almost certainly will be recognized next week when the Academy Award nominations are announced.

"I saw it as a chance to go through time, that I could do whatever," he said. "For me, as a filmmaker, as an artist, I thought it was a great opportunity to put whatever I wanted into the structure of a movie. I could make my own structure, my own language. I knew if I could just get into Jean-Do's world, I would figure it out on the way."

And he did figure it out. Last May, Schnabel journeyed from his house and studio in Montauk (he has another house and studio in the Palazzo Chupi in Manhattan) back to France, where much of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was shot, to pick up a Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. Despite the promotional value of that award, it was decided that the film would not be released in the U.S. until last month so that it was fresh in the minds of those who are Academy Awards voters.

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was included on many end-of-year top-10 lists. The review in The New York Times was a rave, and in the four-star review in Newsday, Jan Stuart wrote, "The visual lyricism and irascible humor of Julian Schnabel's screen adaptation make for a life-against the odds drama like none you've ever seen."

Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" does seem now like promising source material for a motion picture because it is about the imagination. Bauby was the editor of the French version of Elle magazine who lived life in the fast lane. At 43, he had what was termed a "cardiovascular accident" that produced a rare condition known as "locked-in syndrome" which left only his mind and left eye active. His doctor assigns two therapists to teach him how to communicate using the blinking of his eye. Ultimately, his progress is such that he is able to write a memoir. Bauby died of pneumonia several days after the book was published in 1996, and it became a bestseller in France.

Director Julian Schnabel with Mathieu Amalric

Schnabel has directed two previous feature films, "Basquiat" in 1996 and "Before Night Falls" in 2000, but it is "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" that takes the most advantage of the 56-year-old's career as an artist. He was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Brownsville, TX. After graduating from the University of Houston, he was accepted into the independent study program at the Whitney Museum in New York. His first solo show as an artist was in 1975 at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and his paintings began to be included in exhibits in Europe.

The breakthrough for Schnabel came with his solo show at the Mary Boone Gallery in 1979, and the enthusiastic reception his work received. In the years following he was considered a major American artist, and the increasing prices for his paintings reflected that. His autobiography was published when he was only 36. He didn't shy away from fame; indeed, at one point he was quoted as saying, "I'm as close to Picasso as you're going to get in this f****** life."

Filmmaking beckoned, and his movie about Jean-Michel Basquiat, a contemporary of his until he died in 1988, had the benefit of being set in the familiar surroundings of the New York art world. "Before Night Falls" was a branching out for Schnabel. It is about the poet Reinaldo Arenas, and his torture and imprisonment in Cuba for being gay. Javier Bardem, who now can be seen in "No Country For Old Men," received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for playing Arenas.

According to Schnabel, an experience that drew him to "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was the final illness of his father. Jack Schnabel lived with his son, who took care of him for the last year of his life. He died at 92 of prostate cancer in 2004. In the film itself there is a subplot involving Bauby taking care of his invalid father, who is played by Max von Sydow, who some audience members will recognize from Ingmar Bergman movies and others from his portrayal of the older priest in "The Exorcist."

His own father was afraid of death. "I failed him in some way because I couldn't rob him of that fear," Schnabel said. "Having never been sick, my father was unprepared and terrified of death. He lived with my wife and me at the end of his life but I failed to save him from that fear. The experience left me thinking that life cannot just be pain, sex, chaos, and nothingness. There must be something else."

The cast consists of mostly French actors. Schnabel believed that the rich language of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" wouldn't translate to the screen adequately if the movie was made in English – in fact, he believed that so much that in the months before shooting began he learned how to speak and read in French. The Hollywood producer Kathleen Kennedy, who with Frank Marshall had produced many of Steven Spielberg's biggest hits, had purchased the rights to the book, and the original script by Ronald Harwood was in English. Another Spielberg connection is that the film's cinematographer was Janusz Kaminski, who won Academy Awards for "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan," and also shot "War of the Worlds" and "Munich."

Jean-Pierre Cassel and Mathieu Amalric

"I knew that I had to make the movie in France, in French, in the hospital where Jean-Do had been," Schnabel said. "Because if I couldn't do it in the hospital where he was, I didn't think I'd get the right feeling, the right mood and atmosphere. And the way the story's told, even though it's a universal story, it was told by a French man. To really get the voice, I had to believe it myself."

Mathieu Amalric plays Bauby and his acting is winning kudos from critics, but one wishes that the actor originally chosen for the part had been able to play it. However, Johnny Depp had to drop out because of his commitment to the third installment of "Pirates of the Caribbean." (Amalric, by the way, starred in "Munich").

The first half-hour of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is from Bauby's point of view, which, again, Schnabel saw as an opportunity instead of a limitation. "In the beginning, all Jean-Do has is his eye," he said. "But if he doesn't want to hear what people are saying, all he has to do is look away. So that gave me a lot of freedom. I took my glasses off and put them on the camera, so that when it moves, the image is in focus and then out of focus. For the scene where they sew up Jean-Do's eye, I put latex on the lens and I sewed it up."

Schnabel is pleased that the reaction to the film has been a good one given that the material and Bauby's condition could be viewed as rather dismal. He sees "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" as a positive piece of work.

"I wanted this film to be a tool, like his book, a self-help device that can help you handle your own death," he said. "That is what I was hoping for, and that is why I did it."

• Just this past weekend, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film as well as Best Director-Motion Picture. Congrats to Julian, the cast, and crew.

All images courtesy of Miramax Films

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Tom Clavin, whose most recent book is “Halsey’s Typhoon,” a World War II story published by the Atlantic Monthly Press, writes regularly about movies and other entertainment topics for Hamptons.com. Comments and suggestions can be sent to Hondo7@optonline.net.