Strenuously overdirected (to cover a want of imagination and humanity), Julian Schnabel’s La scaphandre et le papillon surveys the reality and fantasies/dreams of an actual person, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of the fashion magazine Elle, whose 1995 massive stroke left him in “locked-in syndrome.” Only his left eyelid survived paralysis, and it is with this that […]
Daily Archives: April 29, 2008
Order means a continuous battle with chaos. Writer-director Krzysztof Zanussi’s grave, mysterious Zycie jako smiertelna choroba przenoszona droga plciowa revolves around Dr. Tomasz Berg (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, tremendously moving), who is dying of lung cancer, casting him in double roles: doctor, patient; observer, one who experiences; nonbeliever (“ . . . grace has bypassed me”), yet […]
Dennis Grunes 