The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Josh and I watched this movie last night after a recommendation from a fellow aspiring speech therapist.

Heads up for anyone who may want to rent it and watch it after my rave review, it is a foreign film. Had Josh known that before we tracked it down at Blockbuster, I have a feeling that I would have had a hard time getting him to watch it. In fact, I didn't tell him he would be reading subtitles until I was putting it in the DVD player :)

In a nutshell, this movie is about a French man who has a massive stroke. So massive that the doctors told him he should have died. But thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, he lived! Hooray!

Oh but by the way, you're completely paralyzed from head to toe.

After his stroke, he had what is called "locked in syndrome," where he is literally locked into his body. People with this condition have no cognitive impairment, no memory loss, no mental retardation, nothing. Their brain functions exactly the same as pre-stroke. Well, except for the part where their brain tells their muscles to move. But other than that, they're all there. Completely paralyzed. The only thing that they can move is their eyes. And if that isn't bad enough, the man in this movie, Jean-Do, had to have one of his eyes sewn shut because it was dying. Talk about a rough life.

So in comes the speech therapist. Jean-Do cannot talk. Never will talk again. But still needs a way to communicate. Can you imagine being completely aware of everything around you, having thoughts and needs and ideas, and not being able to communicate? That was the boat he was in. The system that his speech therapist came up with was a standard blink response, as in blink once for yes, twice for no type deal. Unfortunately, humans need to communicate more than just yes and no. So she came up with a chart of all the letters in the alphabet, in order of frequency of use, and she would repeat them. When she came to the letter that he wanted, he would blink. And so on and so forth until he spelled out his message. o.n.e.l.e.t.t.e.r.a.t.a.t.i.m.e.

What amazed me was his attitude. His first message to the speech therapist was basically, I want to die. And then he realized that he still had his mind. After all that was taken away from him (did I mention that he was the editor of Elle magazine?), he looked for what he still had. His memory. His imagination. His ideas. And then he decided to write a book. His autobiography. o.n.e.l.e.t.t.e.r.a.t.a.t.i.m.e.

I can't even imagine going through anything like that. Overall, it was a very inspiring and moving movie and I highly, highly recommend it. Josh even liked it. Subtitles and all.

warning: although this came with a PG13 rating, there were two definite boobie shots and a side ding dong shot. beware.