Jean-Do: A Hero.

Usually I don’t use my blog to do a movie review, but there is a first time for everything. Recently I had the pleasure of watching a movie called the “Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”

This movie is a French movie with English sub-titles. Normally I shy away from foreign films, because I find them to be pompous and confusing.

I even hate Canadian films. I get so angry when I rent one by mistake. I sit down to watch what I think is going to be an ‘okay’ movie, and then I see it…The Canadian Government symbol, which means that my government subsidized the bill for the film. I think to myself, ‘Great just great now I have to spend the next 90 minutes watching a hoser movie.’ (Hoser is Canadian slang meaning loser. Hoser is pronounced: hose-er.) 8 times out of 10 I am right. I am such a movie snob.

Last week I sat my movie snob butt down and surfed through the pay-per-view movies I came across a French film that intrigued me. David was sleeping and I thought maybe just maybe I could become a bit more cultured.

Here is the movie’s premise:

On December 8, 1995 Jean- Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and eyes (one of which had to be sewn up due to an irrigation problem). He wrote a book. The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, which took ten months (four hours a day). A transcriber repeatedly recite a French language frequented used lettered alphabet: (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome. These events include playing at the beach with his family, getting a bath, and meeting visitors.

Jean-Dominique Bauby was an ordinary man with an extraordinary illness. I am an ordinary woman complaining about the happenings of my ordinary life. Sometimes I need a reminder that I am not as broken as I feel. Wait I take that back…I am as broken as I let myself be, and that’s the truth.

As I watched this amazing true story I sat in awe of this man’s endurance and will. And I pondered what would I be like in that situation? Would I have the same endurance and will? Or would I give up and wilt away? When the days and nights seem long and endless will I remember this man’s journey? Will I preserver and go on? I hope so.

I think…wait I KNOW you should see this movie, which is on video. Or at least read the book. Don’t let an opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eye pass you by.

I give this movie an A, and a thumb’s up.