Yesterday I talked about a few of the Best Supporting Actor nominees that I thought needed a bit more attention, today I’m going to look at a film that is hidden away in four categories, but also deserves more attention - Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Nominated for “Best Adapted Screenplay”, “Best Cinematography”, “Best Editing” and “Best Director” for Julian Schnabel, the film is clearly of great technical merit, but more than that, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of the most inspiring films I have seen in sometime.

An experiment in form and point of view, Schnabel tells the true story of Jean-Dominque Bauby, the editor of French Elle who had a paralyzing stroke at the age of 47, resulting in “locked in syndrome.” Bauby was only able to communicate by blinking his eye but managed to write a book about his life and experience as a prisoner of his own body.

Schnabel used a swivel and tilt lens to tell much of the story through our main character’s perspective. In this way, everyone is Jean-Do’s world stares right into the camera and we experience what is happening just as Jean-Do did, with characters out of our line of sight more often than not. About halfway through, we also begin to see things from an objective POV, just as Jean-Do begins to find his own way to live.

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