With his film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, director Julian Schnabel has taken the movie-of-the-week-baiting story of French "Elle" editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who dictated his memoir from a post-coma paralysis that only gave him control of his left eye, and turned it into something wholly unique. Casting aside the sappy, melodramatic tendencies one might expect this sort of film to rely on, Schnabel wisely tells the story from Bauby's perspective, in a way that will wonderfully surprise most viewers.

Beginning with a long, horribly uncomfortable sequence in which Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) awakes from a three-week coma, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly mesmerizes right from the beginning. Filmed primarily from Bauby's point of view, Schnabel's aggressively stylized approach to the material does just about everything possible to make the audience empathize with his claustrophobic state of "locked-down syndrome". For lack of a better reference, his technique can only be compared to the somewhat similarly frantic stylization of Fight Club, often blurring the line between reality and fantasy. All this allows for Amalric to effortlessly melt into the role, providing the audience with a heartbreakingly humorous and profound narrator. He becomes the only guide that could properly take us through this man's maligned existence, contributing to the film's sense of pure cinema. Schnabel's background as an artist definitely plays a large factor in this, as most of the movie seems to be made with the intention of getting the greatest reaction out of the audience, as opposed to merely following the rules of cinema. It's a risky choice, but in the case of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, it works beautifully.

Despite the fact that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has a pretty good amount of special features, none of them are particularly interesting. Two generic featurettes are predictably bland (gee, I don't think I've ever written that before). The most interesting feature is the Charlie Rose interview of Schnabel, but I would advise watching that at your own risk. Ever the true artiste, Schnabel comes across as an arrogant slob, and while that doesn't make the movie any less great, it certainly isn't something those affected by the film's heart-wrenching beauty will particularly like to witness.

While I cannot entirely recommend purchasing it without having seen it beforehand, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is an incredibly film that should be viewed by all at least once. It's a brilliantly stylized, visceral experience that is unlike most movies you have ever seen, and while I'm sure this notion is enough to alienate a great many viewers, there are just as many if not more who will be vastly rewarded for the work and thought they put into the movies.