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5.29.11
This is an Archival Site
There is now a new Rogovoy Report home



5.18.11
Weekend Preview May 19-24
Bob Dylan tributes, Deborah Voigt, Tom Paxton, Bill Kirchen, John Kirk and Trish Miller



5.18.11
Celebrating Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday in Style
Paying tribute to the greatest rock songwriter ever



5.17.11
FILM REVIEW: In a Better World and Of Gods and Men
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.17.11
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5.12.11
Deborah Voigt Headlines Mahaiwe Gala
Opera star to sing arias, show tunes on Saturday, May 21



5.15.11
Famed Spiritual Teacher to Speak on Nonviolence
Mother Maya in free talk at Sruti Yoga in Great Barrington, Mass., on Friday May 20 at 7pm



5.12.11
Special Effects Wizard to Be Honored by Film Festival
Doug Trumbull to be Feted by BIFF



5.11.11
Weekend Preview May 12-16
Cultural Highlights of the Berkshire Weekend



6.4.09
Talk about a small world
Elaine and I grew up together, but only just recently met....



5.8.11
Berkshire Living to Cease Publication
A Farewell from Publisher Michael Zivyak



5.8.11
twiGs Branches Out
Lenox boutique launches new e-tail site



5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.8.11
[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy



5.7.11
[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy





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[FILM REVIEW] THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

2.21.08
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Directed by Julian Schnabel
Written by Ronald Harwood
Based on a book by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Starring Mathieu Amalric and Emannuelle Seigner
With Max von Sydow

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, written one blink of an eye at a time, is nearly as heroic a piece of filmmaking as was
Bauby's effort to write after suffering a stroke leaving him with "locked-in syndrome."

Director Julian Schnabel and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski do an amazing job of rendering Bauby's consciousness--he can barely see, he can hear, he can't speak, and he's almost totally paralyzed (except for the ability to blink one eye)--in film, so that the story is told from the point of view of the man with locked-in syndrome, thus bringing the viewer into his mortifying world.

Amalric, who is the French Dustin Hoffman, is superb in the role of Bauby, who before his crippling stroke was editor of the French Elle magazine, and apparently quite the
woman's man. (Aren't all French men "women's men"?) The bevy of beautiful women surrounding him -- nurses, therapists, aides, girlfriends, and his former wife, played
caringly by Emannuelle Seigner -- is something of a tease, or a fantasy, perhaps, but it suggests many layers of irony that Bauby should wind up in this position.

The film is slightly marred by some repetitive and heavy-handed symbolism, mainly as embodied by the two aspects of the title. We could do without the many shots of Amalric underwater in a diving bell. And the transformation and freedom represented by the butterfly should have been outlawed as a metaphor after the great film, i>Papillon, made extensive use of it.

Nevertheless, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly does a great job of combining experimental narrative technique with mainstream filmmaking.





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