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What's fascinating is that it is the very restrictions the story imposes on a director that allow Schnabel to turn it into such an eerie stunner of a movie.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of the best movies of 2007, but I'd argue it's also the one most in tune with what this season of goodwill and tolerance is supposed to be all about.
It's a subject and a film that perfectly blends the tragic with the triumphant.
Director Julian Schnabel uses his skill as a painter to assemble a collage of fantastical images to reveal the exquisite physical wreck that Bauby has become.
[Director Julian] Schnabel isn't going anywhere astounding in this film; it is, after all, about a man who can't move. But he is exploring the vast potential of both imagination and spirit.
An inventive, challenging, at times emotionally bracing film, audaciously staged and laudably anti-clichéd in its character particulars, yet destined to be more admired than beloved.
Julian Schnabel and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski fundamentally retool the template for the biopic to create one of the greatest portrayals of the mind's eye ever put to film. A discomforting but inspiring struggle for one enduring, final expression.
This uncommon story about an uncommon man is gentle, it is patient, it is compassionate and -- from a technical standpoint -- it is stunning.
Triumph of the human spirit to the Miramax, predictable in its crowd-pleasing, middlebrow vulgarity but with a few inventive, free-floating passages
[Schnabel is] drawn to the plight of the imagination struggling against limits, and Bauby's Beckett-like extremity has inspired his best film to date and the best film of the year.
Una película realmente conmovedora que logra trasladar a hermosas y sugestivas imágenes la experiencia real de un hombre paralizado física aunque no mentalmente.
Movies are a lot more than a bunch of pictures, no matter how ravishing, and the strong cast is key here, especially the three women who dominate Bauby's life.
Of all the movies generating award buzz this season, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the most surprising to me and perhaps the most special.
The film is certainly rich in imagery, and its immersion into the subjective is a daringly successful conceit, but it never quite pulls all the pieces together.
Nothing in director Julian Schnabel's career so far has anticipated the sweetness, sadness, maturity and restraint of this lovely movie.
How does an actor act when he can use only one eye? You'll have to see the film to find out, but rest assured that there are sufficient flashbacks to give the remarkable Mathieu Amalric a chance to use the usual actor's tools as well.
An emotional tour de force that is simply stunning all around.
The camera techniques used actually give the audience just a hint of what it must be like to live with a fully aware mind, and one working eye.
Diving Bell is modishly slick, visually inventive and vaguely immaterial but ultimately moving because, well, how could it not be?
Subtitled drama takes paralyzed man's perspective.
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