Living-Deliberately.com

It feels a little bit delicously odd to sit in a movie theater with only a few other people in the middle of a weekday afternoon. The last time I did it I saw I’m Not There, in which Cate Blanchete was indeed brilliant, and the four other bodies sitting nearby in the darkness seemed to be there purely for a film class credit. Today I saw The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.

Other than it was Oscar nominated in four categories, I really didn’t know that much about it. There is a theater here that gets some really neat films…in recent weeks they’ve had quite a few shorts and the more obscure award winners that most mainstream theaters won’t carry. True enough Hannah Montana was showing in the other wing. Narrowing down today’s choice to something intelligent turned out to be not so difficult ;-).

The story has a subtle, story-telling plot line…man in his prime suffers a massive stroke and becomes completely paralyzed head to toe, even while remaining totally mentally aware. Understandably he feels utterly imprisoned; the only way he can communincate is by a series of blinks with one good eye. Mercifully surrounded by people who support the retention of his own humanness, he overcomes self-pity and realizes there are two things that are not paralyzed: his imagination and his memory.

And thus, he finds a measure of freedom. Forced to reconcile his old, very vibrant life frought with relational mistakes he now mourns but can do nothing to repair with his new, entrapped existance, he retraces his steps. He writes a book (which became the movie; it’s a true story). He overcomes the submerged silence of the diving bell to soar with the beauty of a butterfly. His story is that study of contrasts.

He does what I think most of us hope we could do when faced with a catastrophic crisis: find a way to move on. The film is brilliant…much of it is filmed from his perspective (remember he can only move one eye) and when someone rubs his cheek or sews his eye shut, we as the movie viewer share the somewhat removed feeling of paralysis: we know the feeling should be there… we can plainly see they are kissing him/us, and yet it’s as numb to him on his skin as it is to us, watching only an image of it. I found myself aching for his release, some kind of miracle breakthrough that would restore him; feeling frustrated with him when the orderly shut off his soccer game at the height, leaving him mentally screaming but without a way to communicate or each time he found out who was truly a friend and who was…not. I thought empathy with him was impossible to resist…

that is, until the middle-aged guy with his cup of coffee two rows up sighed heavily and got up. There were only three of us there…a woman in her 50’s dressed like a Lands End catalog model, myself, and this guy. True, it’s got subtitles (it’s a French film) and true, it’s a little slow at the start (waking from a coma always is I suppose). I have no idea what his problem was; I’m not the type to pay for a movie ticket and ever leave half way. Ever. I saw her in the bathroom when it was over and we joked about him probably thinking it was a “chick flick”.

I wouldn’t have said that about this though. I mean, I guess there is the kind of guy out there who thinks anything with subtitles is a “chick flick”. But I think “chick flick” means a combination of romantic-comedy-with-a-gaggle-of-girlfriends-who-help-the-spurned-heroine-get-her-revenge. So it’s a *thinkers* movie. A *poetic* movie. But knowing guys who are both thinkers and poetic, I wouldn’t classify it a “chick flick”. Maybe he thought it was going to be about scuba diving?
There was one scene where he imagined he was back in a French restaurant with a woman…they ate oysters and champagne. See the last post and you’ll see why I took this as a nice coincidental sign that if oysters and champagne came to my mind two days in a row then I surely must partake of them soon!

After I left I still had the gentle piano soundtrack in my head. I kind of wished I’d stepped out to white birches in a snow field..something nice and still. The jarring traffic of a Friday afternoon just as school let out was too much of a shock. I took my grandma a slice of the blackberry pie I made last night and she told me of the summer she lived in a tent while thier house was being built. The sunlight danced outside her window, here where spring comes early and butterflies, I swear they do, remind us all to persevere and dream of greatness.

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