SUSO

Hailed as a rare success among films based on books, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' made The Guardian's 2008 top 10. So was it deserved or not?

W / DAISY BELL + OSCAR POWELL

'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' was written by Jean-Dominique Bauby in 1997 after he was left paralysed at the age of 43 by a stroke. He contracted a rare disorder called locked-in syndrome. The only part of his body he could move was his left eye. All he could do was blink.

Confronting the horror of his situation, Bauby responded defiantly by communicating letters and words to his doctors and nurses with his left eye. They read out letters and he blinked twice for 'no' and once for 'yes'. On average, a sole word took two minutes to narrate, but word by word, blink by blink, a remarkable literary work emerged, one laced at times with desperate agony, as you'd expect, but at others with unprecedented joy.

Though he felt trapped as if locked in a diving bell suit and sunk to the bottom of the sea, his imagination roamed free. He became a butterfly caught in the wind of his own thoughts, escaping the reality of his suffering and zipping freely through his treasured memories and harboured fantasies of what might - might - have been. Bauby died ten days after the book was published.

For those looking for truth, though, there will always be the book - you simply can't argue with Bauby himself.

Ten years on from its publication, Julian Schnabel's adaptation was released. Film, it seemed, was suited to the story in two ways: conjuring the imaginative flights to which Bauby escaped; and providing insight into how it actually felt to be in his position. We see what he sees and we hear what he hears, and in the film's most moving moments, we feel what he feels. At one point Bauby is watching a game of football - an everyday occurrence for most. He's commentating on his team's chances. Then, just as they're about to score, a cleaner comes in, switches off the TV, and leaves the room. Bauby can do nothing. It's in such moments of mundanity that compassion is at its most extreme.

[Bauby before the stroke]

Through cinematography, Schnabel perfectly captures the plight of his protagonist. Using simple shots from nature - insects and flowers - as well as a clip of him frolicking on the beach with the woman he loves, he mirrors Bauby's rampant imagination. This was the life Bauby tried to live; an exclusively interior existence, away from his paralysis. But his imagination fails him in the film, images of him stuck on a plinth floating in the ocean or trapped inside a diving bell describe the choking frustration he must have felt. The diverse soundtrack - from Tom Waits through U2 and pianist Paul Cantelon - suits the frequent changes in the film as we move from hospital wards to clips from his past life, all interspersed with those fervent fantasies of his mind and the troubling scenes of distress.

The film was criticised by a number of Bauby's friends for misrepresenting aspects of Bauby's life, notably women. The mother of his children, Sylvie de la Rochefoucauld, is portrayed as a saint, while his girlfriend, Florence Ben Sadoun, comes across as a coward who refuses to visit. In reality, Florence sat by Bauby throughout his illness and he died in her arms; yet when writing the adaptation, screenwriter Ronald Harwood confided in de la Rochefoucauld. Inevitably, the film favours her. To set the record straight, Florence recently published her own account of the story, not as an act of revenge, she says - although the title, 'The False Widow', would suggest otherwise - but simply to give her character a voice she felt she'd been denied; we await an English translation. Another who knew Bauby felt Schnabel had created not a story of his friend, "but a story for Hollywood". The film, it seems, was economical with the the facts.

[Bauby in the film, played by Mathieu Amalric]

For those looking for truth, though, there will always be the book - you simply can't argue with Bauby himself. Still, this is one of those rare occasions when book and film can peacefully co-exist, one the heartfelt expression of how it was for Bauby, the other a gripping factual and emotional embellishment of that same story. The film certainly does the book no great disservice. It's simply another way of seeing. Each forms part of a profoundly affecting testament to one of recent history's most creative and determined souls. It hardly seems to matter who Bauby loved more, who came to see him the most, or who put him to bed at night. The details are irrelevant, at least to those who never knew him. But the remorse we feel for the cruel tragedy of Bauby's condition, and then the things he achieved despite it, are not.