Carolyn: personally, I was kind of bored during the film...it was a very dramatic movie which I think made it not that exciting for me, because stuff like this can actually happen in real life and it just seems, I duno..scary and really depressing...what did you think?
Magdalen: I understand what you mean by depressing. It made me angered inside and feel agitated inside when I saw Jon Do as the person he was inside as he was prior to his stroke. And the body he was caged in afterwards. His mind ran miles where as his body (other than his one eyes) was completely incapacitated..excuse the spelling of the name
Carolyn: ya I have no clue how to spell his name..anyways! it was sad to watch his children and his father become so affected by Jean's tragedy..whereas before when they showed glimpses of his life before the tragedy, he was such a loving father and son..it was definately life changing for him and for his family as well..it makes you wonder about real life occurences like this one
Magdalen: i really appreciated the mother of his children taking the time and making the effort to care for Jean and made sure his children were there to see him and support him as well. However, as sad as that was there were two things that changed altered my sad state in watching the film
Magdalen: first was that Jean had a lover who may or may not of torn his family apart prior to the accident which I felt was a negative second was the language translation and the voice over that took away from some of the intense moments such as the time Jean's father was crying over the phone
Carolyn: ya I didn't like the overlay of the speech..it was a foreign film..I also didn't like how the camera director filmed the movie..although it is how Jean saw the world, it made me feel sick at times because for one the camera wasn't showing the whole image (how we as normal human beings see the world) and also because it made me feel so depressed for Jean, knowing that that is how he watches his everyday occurrence..it makes me sick just thinking about how this can happen to people
Magdalen: I have the same feeling. it is really tragic but I think that how the director captured the scenes from Jean's eye, I believe, made the point he intendedCarolyn: ya that's true
Magdalen: I think it was supposed to make people feel this way..I also found the film a little bit confusing; especially there parts where he was under water in the scubadiving outfit
Carolyn: ya I didn't understand what that was all about, also the virgin mary statue...this movie was just confusing over all..but i'm glad we picked this one to watch out of all the other ones
Magdalen: I'm glad we did too, I wanted to watch it because it was based on a real life story and it was also eye opening apart from much confusion.
Carolyn: agreed :)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
For those of you who haven't seen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, it is about a man who leads a normal accelerating lifestyle until he has a stroke and is unable to move his body and unable to talk. He goes through many challenges such as having one of his eyes sewn shut, and also to be able to talk he had to blink whenever someone read him the alphabet; this was how he spoke to others. He had three children who were all still very young. Whenever he thought about his children or his father, he became very sad and remembered back to the good times he had with them. His ex came to visit often because of the children and so she stayed a lot at the hospital with him to keep him company. He became close with his therapist who was helping him write his book that he had always wanted to write.
I was very confused throughout the movie when they kept on flashing back to when he was normal. The way the director filmed this movie made it hard to understand for me and hard to keep track of the past and present. My friend and I watched the movie together and we both were very surprised with the ending. We weren't really expecting him to pass, but we knew he wasn't going to get better. We both felt somewhat bored during the movie because it was more of a serious matter that keeps you down and depressed. My friend and I talked about real life occurrences such as this one, and how it can affect your life forever, and the people around you. I can't imagine going through something like that, I would just want to die. Not being able to move or talk, and not even able to see the world with two eyes just makes things terrible for a person. I have always had respect and care for people who are unable to do certain things in their life such as this person, but not until I watched this movie do I have even more respect for people with life threatening events.
Personally I wouldn't get children to watch this movie until they were older. If I was to show clips from this movie to young children, I would chose the clips when the man's family came to visit him in the hospital and how the children reacted to their father whose lifestyle had changed in an instance. An art activity for children could maybe be children drawing the man sitting in the hospital and allowing them to make wishes that the father might want for himself. I would discuss to the cihldren that everyone can make wishes for themselves, and people who are physically hurt or upset should be allowed to have more wishes than others. We would discuss as a class what kinds of wishes the man would be wanting for himself and if he would be able to get those wishes.
