Hacker Cinema
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon
2007 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Julian Schnabel
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French fashion bible Elle magazine, has a devastating stroke at age 43. The damage to his brain stem results in locked-in syndrome, with which he is almost completely paralyzed and only able to communicate by blinking an eye. Bauby painstakingly dictates his memoir via the only means of expression left to him.
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13 comments on Hacker News
There’s a book and movie adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by a guy who was awake and mostly paralyzed but worked out how to communicate by blinking his eyes.
check out the diving bell and the butterfly, movie adaptation of a first hand account of someone who went through this. incredibly powerful film, and the physical is only half of the nightmare. because the man who had become completely paralyzed (apart from one functional eyelid - his other eye was drying out and had to be sewn shut while he helplessly screamed in silence begging the doctor not to bring the needle near his eye) had a rather unflatteringly messy personal life, and was in a position of witnessing all of his dirty laundry being aired between his mistress, and his wife, and his dying father.
all while he was completely competent mentally, but completely incapable of representing himself in any of the intrigues that were unearthed consequent to his injury. all a true story, written by the author while being locked in, one agonizing eye blank at a time with the aid of a nurse who finally figured out he was conscious.
A welcome upgrade to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly_(film)
Your point about the visual keyboard is important. As long as they have a repeatable 1 bit worth of output, you can extract any number of bytes. You can have a keyboard where they can see it, move your finger from one letter to the next, and then when they do their 1 bit of output (e.g. blink) that locks in the letter. For the film lovers out there, there's a great dramatization of this in the 2007 French movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. [1]
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[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401383/
The modern day has the movie and memoire of a Frenchman with locked-in syndrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly
A paralyzed man wrote a book by blinking when someone pointed at the right letter (sort of like how the guy stranded on Mars in book/movie The Martian sent messages to earth). This story was later made into the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly
Another fairly well-known account of locked-in syndrome would be The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby (also made into a movie); in his case the precipitating event was a stroke.
La Haine (1995)[0]: not so much that I saw it differently, more that I felt less crazy for seeing it as it was. I come from those exact areas and times, and even twenty years later there is a terrible amount of similarity in how things are unraveling.
Children of Men (2006)[1]: for the combination of cinematography and the dystopian atmosphere.
Departures / Okuribito (2008)[2]: the subtlety and elegance of the Japanese touch when brushing against Life and Death.
Persona (1966)[3]: I can and can't wrap my head around this movie. I think it left a trace on me in a way that my conscious self doesn't address but the subconscious plays with.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)[4]: there are few things that can put a person against their own mind more than the locked-in syndrome. There's a lot of confusion, humility and strength to find in such apparent helplessness and lack of control. I think of it when I encounter people with ALS or other neuro-degenerative illnesses, and I think of it when I explore my own journey throughout the depths of mental illness.
Amour (2012)[5]: when you go through certain inevitable journeys with people you love, there's so much to be found in the most essentially simple things.
I'm sure there are other impactful things out there but my memory is pretty spotty at times.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238/
[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060827/
[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401383/
[5] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602620/
Slightly off topic, but have you seen the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? It's about a man with locked-in syndrome. Only his left eye isn't paralysed and he writes a book by blinking the alphabet one letter at a time... If your glass if half full it's life affirming, if not it's harrowing. Either way it's worth watching.
I posted this on the site, posting it here too:
I would say a better metric would be "How much did you enjoy this film?" vs "How good is this movie?"
I've been grappling with this problem since subscribing to Netflix, wondering how I should rate a movie I personally did not enjoy that I also felt was incredibly well made. For example, "A Clockwork Orange" is an incredible movie by all means and I would give it 97 stars out of a hundred.... but I hated every single second of it. It's gruesome, sadistic, dark, miserable, and disgusting. But it was undeniably well made.
Rewatchability sucks in the aspect because many movies can't be rewatched, while still being both splendidly produced and enjoyable. Let me make this clearer with examples: "The Sixth Sense," "Rear Window," "The Accused," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "12 Angry Men," "Apollo 13..." The list goes on and on. There are great movies that just don't rank so highly because they're SUSPENSEFUL and that suspense doesn't translate will into rewatches. Rewatching suspenseful movies will make them seem boring and long-drawn.
Rewatching feel-good movies ("Seven Pounds," "How To Train Your Dragon," "Blind Side," etc.) however, is just as good the second time if not better.
tl;dr the rewatchability index will be heavily skewed towards feel-good favorites and epics, and away from dark, gritty, mysterious, and suspenseful. Not a good index.
1. The Killing Fields
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Killing-Fields/671140?trkid=438403#height1457
2. Danny Deckchair
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Danny-Deckchair/60033353?trkid=496751#height1554
3. As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me (German film)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/As-Far-as-My-Feet-Will-Carry-Me/70068024?trkid=496751#height1848
4. Vitus (another German flick)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Vitus/70068654?trkid=496751#height1509
5. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French film)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/The-Diving-Bell-and-the-Butterfly/70071610?trkid=496751#height1941
6. Band of Brothers (HBO mini-series)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Band-of-Brothers-Disc-1/60024705?trkid=496751
7. The Pianist
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/The-Pianist/60025061?trkid=496751#height1522
8. I am David
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/I-Am-David/60034547?trkid=496751#height1771
Or "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401383/
Just about every movie that got an Oscar nod is a worth a trip to The Pirate Bay. My favorites this year were Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will be Blood, and War/Dance.