Tonight I watched a film that has been highly recommended to me...and as with most of us I think, when something comes highly recommended it almost always falls short. I felt the film was thought-provoking and had some very interesting camera work but unfortunately, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly just did not hit the note that other films (The Painted Veil as an example off of the tip of my nose) have done. It seems strange to say this but I truly felt like it should have! It is a sad yet inspirational story about a man who overcomes the most extreme form of disability to write a best-selling book--a most tedious task as each letter had to be said through the blink of an eye--but I was still disappointed. Maybe I wanted to know more about his actual life so as to understand who he was before. Although I suppose when you get down to it that was not the point now, was it?

The film shows us glimpses of his life before his accident: his trip with a lover to a city named Lourdes, him giving his father a shave and their interaction (it is apparent that he cares a lot for his father and that their relationship is a close one). For most of the film, however, these flashbacks and the dialogue of his visitors do not give us the impression that Jean-Do was a necessarily good man before his accident: he cheated on the mother of his children with a flighty, beautiful (and fair-weather) young woman; he never called a friend whom was a prisoner for four years in Beirut, etc. But upon further thought, it becomes apparent that Jean-Do is not a bad man--he is just human. We all make mistakes , say and do things we regret, but we are just doing the best that we can.

The former prisoner comes to visit Jean-Do and reminds him to hold on to his humanity...Which is, I suppose, a good mantra for us all. Hold on to your humanity, world.