The cinema and the vegetable

In one of the funnier scenes of the movie 'the diving bell and the butterfly', Jean-Do, the protagonist overhears some people referring to him as a vegetable. In the voice over of his thoughts he wonders, what kind of vegetable am I, am I a carrot or a potato? And then he laughs.

The story of the movie is well-known, successful editor of Elle with extra cool lifestyle (fashion, women, cars and photoshoots with Lenny Kravitz) suddenly gets locked-in syndrome and can only move one eyelid. With the genius help of his therapist, who devises a method of communication, he dictates a book, publishes it and then dies. If you want a tragedy, it is fair to say that you can't get more tragic than that.

There have been various recent movies with people that cannot move (the sea inside) or are vegetables (talk to her), but Julian Schnabel's triumph in this movie is the amazing way of portraying the solitude of the person locked in this diving bell. With a lengthy initial point-of-view shot, through the eyelid of his protagonist and with the voice-over of his thoughts that cannot be heard from other people, we get the tragedy all right. And it is too much indeed.

But the movie is funny as well as uplifting in some weird sense, not because of the 'triumph of human spirit' in a cheesy sense. It is uplifting because Jean-Do, whose first words when he first manages to communicate are, je veux mourir-I want to die, ends up hanging on to 'what makes him human' and uses his imagination and his memories to carry on living. It is not too much but it still something, for him at least. In a day in the beach with his children, he says, I think a fraction of a Dad is better than no Dad at all.

This is in sharp contrast with the hero of 'the sea inside', who is certain that he doesn't want to live, even if he communicates all right. Art should not be judgmental, it is not for anyone to say what people can endure. One person wants to die and another dictates a book and then dies, unwillingly. The women in 'talk to her' are vegetables, girlfriends in a coma, but their lives go on in spite of them: they copulate, break-up, get back together with ex-es and use face cream. We never hear their voices and maybe they don't have any, but their bodies are there and that makes them present.

In the ever-relevant debate of mind vs. body, these movies takes different stances, all of which interesting. Maybe one day we will know what makes a man a man, the body or the mind, the diving-bell or the butterfly, the ghost or the shell. Until then, we make movies about it.