This beautifully shot tragedy film of the life of Jean-Dominique Bauby is a epic and spectacular lens master class. The film is about the point of view of Bauby, and the restricted view in which he is withheld to. As he awakens from his coma, you are locked inside his perspective, his minimal and restricted perspective. You are trapped inside to his vision, the film wants the audience to witness the view that Bauby has. Your vision is minimal and your hearing is different to the reality in which you are used to. Your are given the life of paralyzed man. Trapped inside and unable to gain anyone else’s perspective. But as the film goes on and narrates, you gain more restriction and you begin to learn more about Jean-Dominique’s past and relationships to the real world, while learning and finding yourself progressing in sound and vision in Bauby’s body. The audience experience the improvements of restricted life that Bauby now has, through spectacular camera and sound work, you are replicated the life of Bauby. Your vision is poor and your hearing is weak, but this improves.
The films camera work is speechless. Its beautifully shot to replicate the emotion of this restricted body and the motion in which he is restricted to. You are given a perception of a disability. A perspective of being un-ordinary and weakened in society. As the film progresses, your point of view broadens out, and as the audience, your broaden your knowledge of his past and his future. He begins to write a book entirely through blinking by using his slow and exhausting communication methods. Through the perspective of the protagonist, you gain a relationship and emotion with that character, you become remote to your feelings and share bonds. This film is an extraordinary piece of camera work and portrays techniques in showing perspectives of the real world through somebody else’s ways, and in this case, the perspective of someone who has had their motion but no emotion taken away from inside. Their imagination is not paralyzed.
Daniel Booker, Lens Media 