What I Saw in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (From the earlier post)

This film was pretty entertaining as well as nice presentation. There were many great concepts that took place as the film progressed in the cinematography in terms of blurriness, narration through the camera and color choices. At the opening of the film, the strong visibility of the high white balance gave a well defined presence of the lights in the hospital room and how they may have been blinding when the main character, Jean-do, opened his eye for the first time after the stroke. The fast motion and blurry images show confusion and tears that arose. 

     I loved the concept of being in the mind of the main character for a majority of the film. The fact that the filmmakers first showed this instead of the image of him outside the body was brilliant because it didn’t allow any preconceived thoughts of how I should feel about the character. For instance, there would have been a stronger urge to feel compassion for him because of what he is undergoing. It does posses the characteristic of the films The Russian Arc and Johnny Got His Gun because the narrator is able to be heard by the audience but not those who surround him. However, things shifted once we left the section of being inside his head.

Once leaving the first person thought process, it did two things for me. The first was it upset me because I actually like going through the recovery with character. It allowed an opportunity understand the fear that he was facing, such as when his right eye was being sewn shut. The idea of only being able to see only sections of his face, such as his lips were in the mirror, gave off a strong wonder of what does the rest of him look like. It seemed along the same lines of the 1920s silent version of the Phantom of the Opera because it is what the audience can’t see that is interesting. Second, the transition to the film being in third person was somewhat well done, by the flash of a frame that occurred immediately after his eye was sewn shut. But what was a good idea was when flash backs occurred, the frames were somewhat lower quality. This may have been a representation of hazy memories. To help show this taking place, the doctors scruffy beard in the beginning sequence is very well detailed and each hair is present and the flashbacks are somewhat more blurry.

The last thing that I want to touch base is color. The use of color and tone really helped push the movie along and tell the story. When the lead character was in the hospital room and felt a sense of aloneness, there was a tint of blue. When he was going through the idea of witch doctors, there was a strong septa tone of orange. Finally, I absolutely loved the red from virgin Mary statue both times it is shown (The bedroom and the store window).