MovieChat Forums > Le scaphandre et le papillon (2008) Discussion > Stopped half way.

Stopped half way.

posted 15 years ago by sugarkang
8 replies | jump to latest

This movie has the unique accomplishment of being simultaneously boring and frustrating. Quite amazing because usually frustration leads to a kind of keen interest. That didn't happen here.

Apparently, he wrote an autobiography. If you want to know about Jean-Do's life, I suggest getting that. At least you won't have to hear different characters cycling through the entire alphabet just to decode three words. The book would be much faster at getting this guy's thoughts.

I can't believe this is in the IMDB top 250. They could have EASILY skipped the alphabet cycling by just showing the codebreaker's face with him monologuing over the visual. Totally frustrating. Total waste of time. Terrible directing.

[–] Rackuzius 15 years ago

Can you please give three examples of movies that are directed great. Just trying to get a a better idea of the type of movies you enjoy.

[–] Flossieandflo 14 years ago

That's surely the whole point of the film? To convey the frustration of having 'locked in' syndrome?

[–] sugarkang 14 years ago

The point isn't to frustrate the viewer. The point is for the viewer to empathize or vicariously feel the frustration of the protagonist.

And more to the point, they only needed to do the alphabet cycling a few times for us to "get the point." They could have skipped it for every subsequent conversation.

[–] Flossieandflo 14 years ago

I'm sure Jean-Do would have like to have been able to voice his thoughts and have them understood instantly too - it would have been much less frustrating.

We do get to hear his thoughts as an uninterrupted internal monologue throughout the film, it is only when he has to communicate that the transcribing is shown. That is how it was for him - I think this film did a great job of getting inside his skin.

We shall have to agree to disagree on this one - but I did watch the whole film.

[–] macgirl66 14 years ago

I am going to agree with Nachohater here. I think the point of the film was to show the frustration of locked-in syndrome from Bauby's point of view. EVERY time he wanted to talk with someone who came to visit, he had to run through the alphabet and blink. I'm sure it took significantly longer than each scene shows. However, each scene illustrates what he has to go through just to communicate at all.

I read about the time he spent writing his book. It says it took him ten months, spending four hours each day of dictating words by blinking his eyelid, with an average of each word taking two minutes. It took approximately 200,000 eye blinks to "write" his book. He died two days after it was published in France.

So yes, I do think each scene that was included in the movie that illustrated all the work that was done with the speech therapists to help him learn how to communicate, and then all the scenes included showing him actually communicating with his visitors were really important in conveying to us, the viewer what it was really like for him to live after his accident and illness. I don't think most people can possibly begin to imagine what it would be like to live with locked-in syndrome, and I think this film gives the average viewer a good picture of that.

To each their own...opinion

[–] swlabr 12 years ago

How do these movies get in the top 250?
I can think of so many more deserving

[–] SamoanJoes 11 years ago

Stopped half way? Then you missed the scene where a T-Rex comes in and starts stomping on everybody. It's the best scene in the movie!

[–] scifi75 11 years ago

I think movies like: "Dude! Where's My Car" are more your pace, eh?