IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE...
FRENCH ACTOR MATHIEU AMALRIC GIVES A BEAUTIFUL PERFORMANCE IN THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY AS A STROKE VICTIM WHO SEIZES BACK CONTROL AND REMINDS US THAT LIFE, EVEN AT ITS HARDEST, IS BEAUTIFUL
Last week, I got an early look at The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (12/19, Miramax, trailer), and came away almost certain that it will have a place on my end-of-the-year top ten list. First, it is one of the most visually innovative and stunning films you will see this or any year—I believe credit for this should probably be shared between the immensely talented cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (who won Oscars for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan) and the eccentric director Julian Schnabel, who is also a world-class painter. Second, it is a simply jaw-dropping story—I would have used the word 'unbelievable' if I had not been forewarned that it is actually based on a true story. And third, it marks another wonderful, challenging performance by a Frenchman who never wanted to be an actor in the first place, Mathieu Amalric.
If you've been keeping up on your French cinema, then you know Amalric has popped up in a number of prominent roles over the past decade-plus, most notably in the critically acclaimed Kings and Queen (2004). If not, you'll almost certainly remember him as the wheeler-dealer who does business with Eric Bana in Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005). It was during the filming of that controversial film that Spielberg's longtime producer Kathleen Kennedy saw something in Amalric that led her to recommend him to director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), who was then attempting to cast The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Despite considering a number of more famous stars, including Johnny Depp and Bana, Schnabel decided to take a gamble by casting a French actor to play a French character in a movie shot in France that would, most importantly, have to play in America.
While it remains to be seen whether the gamble will pay off financially (aside from featuring subtitles, the film is admittedly a bit of an emotional rollercoaster that is sometimes upsetting), it will be hard for anyone to argue against its cinematic merits. It is one of those rare films that leads you to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself some hard questions when you get home, and that's not a bad thing. Just two days after seeing the film, and just an hour before discussing it with its supprting actor/film legend Max von Sydow, I had the pleasure of speaking with Amalric, whose English could use a little polish, but whose endearing charm, intelligence, and humility were anything but lost in translation...
I hope you can talk a little about your background. Where were you born, what did your parents do, what was your childhood like?
[laughs] That’s a question I am asking myself every day, you know? I’m born—I know that I’m born on the twenty-fifth of October, ’65, in Paris. My parents were both journalists—and I say were because they’re not dead, they stopped working now. So my father worked for Le Monde in political exterior affairs—you know, foreign affairs—in journalism, so I lived in Washington, D.C. between five and eight years old, and then in Moscow between eight and twelve, and then back to Paris. And then, in fact, I started in movies when I was seventeen years old, but on the other side—I was a trainee, A.D., assistant editor, you know, all those jobs, and I directed my short films as a director. And that was my dream. And when I was thirty years old, Arnaud Desplechin, the guy that did Kings and Queen, we did another film nine years ago—more than that—and he was the first guy who had the idea that I could act, in fact, but I had never acted before. Never.
You never had any desire to act before it was suggested to you?
If I had a desire, it was very, very unconscious. I was so shy. Acting, for me, is like a vengeance on adolescence, you know? All the things that you are not able to do—to invite a girl to dance in a party, you know, if you know stay near the wall all the time. That’s the sort of guy I was. So maybe I’m acting now just to, you know, to forget that period. I don’t know. [laughs] Well, sometimes, shy people become completely, you know, more crazy than the others. And I continue to act because irresistible things happen to me—I mean, friends-directors ask me to act in their films and, in the same time, I just finished writing another script of mine. I directed three feature films already, and I’m starting to prepare another one for this winter.
You’ve said in the past, after you’d become an actor, “I don’t want to be a star.” What led you to feel that way?
[laughs] Oh, you think I said that? That seems quite modest. Yeah, well, you know—no, no, how can I say? Being in movies, for me, as I’ve worked both sides, I mean, it’s such a part of my breathing, my life, you know? What I like is to work on films like Munich and then work on a short film for free with friends, you know what I mean? Try to continue to be in different places, not just do one sort of movies. You know, that’s more that. And then, it’s also because sometimes—you know, I just love having my life where nobody recognizes me, you know? I can just have my kids, and have a normal life, you know? And that is very precious for me because I think that then you can’t observe the others anymore; you’re always obsessed by how people are looking at you, but you can’t look at the others, you know? And as I’m more—well, my vocation is more to be a director, I like to be hidden, and observe the others, and life.
As you noted, you got into acting later than most. Did you ever have any formal training? Did you ever acquire a method of how you do it? Some people claim that they approach a part using the Stanislavski Method, or some other technique. What works for you?
Well, I think, as I have no technique, I have to work much more than the others, because I’m afraid that people will see that I’m not a real actor. [laughs] And then the thing that I need is to feel that the director, I don’t know, that we are together, you know? That somebody is looking at me and we’re sharing something. That’s the most important thing, I think. You can’t be an actor by yourself. You have to be re-looked by somebody. That’s why, sometimes, good actors can be very bad in a film, and absolutely amazing in another, but it’s almost not their fault—it’s just because something happened. It’s like a love story—I mean, it’s just desire between an actor and a director. That is my guide, in fact. And then I think that movie actors have to do more with circus than with ideas—I mean, it’s very physical. It has to do with practice. For example, for Kings and Queen, I spent two months learning hip-hop, you know, or violin. For the Schnabel film, I, of course, practiced on how to know the alphabet, how to keep my eye open, how to not move—it’s very physical not to move, in fact. It’s true. But, each time, I love it when you have to learn, I don’t know, anything—how to be a carpenter, how to fall by the window, you know? You just do physical stuff. Yeah, that’s more my practice, each time.
I hope I can quickly ask you about three or four of your major roles leading up to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Hopefully, you can offer for each maybe just a sentence or two of what the role meant to the development of your life and your career. The first one that I gather was pretty significant was The Sentinel in 1992…
Well, La Sentinelle, I had a very, very small part. But it’s more the other one that I did just afterwards, called My Sex Life, or How I Got Into an Argument, where I had the first part, the leading part. Well, that was the first time—Arnaud Desplechin told me that, ten days before the shooting. And, in Desplechin’s films, you speak a lot, so it was like I was doing my homework all the time, learning the lines and just hating myself having not been good in school and not learning my poetry, you know, because I had a very bad memory. So, just sort of unconscious, I don’t know, I said to myself, “Okay, the director is the guy who’s taking risks. It’s not me. He knows that I’m not an actor.” That was the first. And it, sort of, gave me a big confidence in directing my own films. Just afterwards, I decided to refuse to be an actor, because it was, like, a great life, you know? It’s like Cinderella to be an actor, and I decided really to go back to directing. So I just did a feature film of mine just afterwards.
The second one I want to ask you about is Kings and Queen. That was a major one in exposing you to many more people. You won the Cesar for Best Actor…
Yeah. Well, it’s the same director, Arnaud Desplechin, again. But what was really moving for us—it was nine years later. And so many things happen between thirty and forty years old, you know? Kids or not kids, dissolutions, sickness, death—all those things. And we are not close friends with Arnaud—that’s why, I think, we love each other that much [laughs], and we continue to work together. So it was, like, a new discovery together. And Rois et Reine, for me, I saw this director, Desplechin, being more and more touching, and more and more funny—I don’t know, like it was a painter that had more colors on his palette, you know? And so we went quite far in comedy and in physical stuff.
And then the final one is Steven Spielberg’s Munich, which must have been just a huge moment in your life…
Yeah. That was—[laughs] I didn’t understand what happened to me, of course. I was thinking of Francois Truffaut, who acted in The Third Encounters [clearly referring to Truffaut's cameo in Spielberg's 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind], you know, and he was a director. So when I went to the casting, I cheated—I said, “I didn’t learn my lines,” you know? And I said, “No, but I’m not an actor, you know? I’m just a director. I didn’t know there was lines to learn—oh, shit!” And, in fact, I had learned it really very, very well. So I, sort of, start reading, and at one point I just, you know, acted. So, of course, they were impressed, because they thought— And then, of course, it was amazing because I saw this guy, Steven Spielberg, is just so enchanted by his life—I mean, his job. He’s like a kid! He’s excited, he loves actors, he’s having fun, he’s reacting at the moments at what’s happening. He had no storyboard—you can propose lots of things. I was amazed to see that on a big, big scale, there was so much freedom, you know, in the creation. That was amazing. And, of course, because of Munich, Kathleen Kennedy, on the last day of shooting, gave me the script of The Diving Bell—I mean, you know, it’s amazing. Amazing.
I understand that there were some other very, very high-profile actors [Johnny Depp, Eric Bana] who were considered for the role of Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. How did it all together for you?
Well, I think it’s luck again, I don’t know—well, luck, you know, at some point you don’t even know what it is anymore; sometimes it’s destiny, or things like that. Kathleen Kennedy saw me on Munich, had this idea, because Julian was telling her all the time, “I think it’s not a good idea to do this French novel in the States. I want to shoot it in French, in France, in the real hospital where the real story really happened.” That was Julian’s intuition on this film. So when Kathleen Kennedy thought of me, she talked of me to Julian, and, in fact, Julian knew how I was because he had seen me in a film ten years ago in San Sebastian. So, you know, something connected. And then I spent four days with Julian in his home, and it was a moment of Thanksgiving, I remember, two years ago. And we just spent four days cooking, speaking, going through the script, and talking about our fathers—and I felt that, for Julian, it was really a necessity to do this film because of his father, because of lots of things, and I felt that we had something to do to together. I don’t know. It was obvious. That’s how it happened, in fact.
For people who may not be familiar with the story, either from reading the book or from seeing the trailer or the film, can you give a general sense of who Jean-Dominique Bauby was, but also what the title The Diving Bell and the Butterfly really refers to? You know, what the metaphor is…
Yes. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was a very famous book in France when it was released ten years ago because the guy who wrote it, Jean-Dominique Bauby, was one of the chief editors of Elle magazine, and he had this stroke, and he couldn’t move his body anymore when he woke up. The only thing that was still working was his left eye—his eyelid—and nobody knew very well that sickness, at that time. And they discovered that, in fact, he could understand, so then he’d, sort of, blink one time for “yes,” two times for “no.” Then they, sort of, invented an alphabet, and he could start to say words by blinking. And this journalist, Bauby, always dreamt of being an author, a writer, and he started to have this amazing idea of writing a book like that. So he wrote the book with his eyelid, and a woman took the dictate, you know? And, the thing is, this guy had lots of sense of humor, and that’s how he found this ‘butterfly.’ The ‘diving bell’ is the moments when he finds himself so heavy he can’t move—he’s in this envelope in his body that just doesn’t respond. If he wants to itch himself, he can’t. If there’s a guy that closes the TV during an important football match, he can’t say, “No!” He’s closed in his body—that’s the ‘diving bell.’ And as he says, “There’s two things left to me—my imagination and my memories, and with that I can go wherever I want.” And that’s when he feels himself as a ‘butterfly.’ And it’s true—in fact, it’s amazing what you can do. With your thoughts, you can go anywhere you want, and that’s what writing is about, also. And the film is amazing because it has so much to deal with the miracle of life, and not about the desire of dying.
It’s interesting you say that, because The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has been compared with another film, The Sea Inside, which is also great, but features some stark differences that I hope you can talk address…
The Sea Inside is the film with Javier Bardem?
Yeah. El Mar Adentro…
El Mar Adentro, yeah. Ah, The Sea Inside—that’s the Spanish title. Well, it’s exactly the opposite because Javier Bardem plays a guy who is fighting for the right to stop living—he wants to die. He wants to stop that. That’s what El Mar Adentro is about. Jean-Dominique Bauby—he didn’t want to die. He didn’t even think he was going to die. He was thinking he was going to write another book. It’s something very different. We thought about it, of course, because Javier Bardem is a very close friend of Julian—he acted in Before Night Falls—so it was something we had in mind. But, so quickly, we felt that they were not dealing on the same inner-life. It wasn’t the same subject, in fact.
Bauby is obviously a very unusual sort of part, and so I wondered—aside from reading the book—what you were able to do intellectually to play the part. For instance, I wondered if you had spoken with the real Bauby’s family or the staff…
Of course, I did.
And did you read about or observe stroke victims? And, I don’t know, perhaps even someone you’ve known in your own life has been afflicted by a stroke? I hope you can talk about this mental process of preparing…
There were two persons that were really very important for me. A guy called Laurent, who was his best friend, who is played by Isaach De Bankole in the film—we spent nights talking about Bauby. He showed me photographs, he told me so many things that he hadn’t spoken about for ten years, you know? And he offered me this confidence, this material. And also the last woman that he loved—in the film, it’s not exactly his real life. In fact, at the end of his life, he was living with a woman who came every day in the hospital, because he didn’t live with his wife anymore—Florence Ben Sadoun told me a lot of things, also. And they all helped me, telling me that this guy was just not a saint. [laughs] He was continuing to seduce from his bed, looking at the legs of women; being like a baby; liking to be in grief, you know, sometimes; and being narcissistic, you know; and wanting to be famous; and all the complexity. It’s not because you have a stroke that you become a saint, you know? That was very important for me, not to take the vivacity of human life—you know, the complexity. And, the thing is, he became a writer, that’s true. So it’s amazing what’s happened. In fact, he’s a sort of hero. But like all heroes—real heroes—they’re not conscious of being a hero. You know what I mean? You don’t decide to be a hero. It happens because you do something. So that was very important for me. And there was also the medical crew of the real hospital where we shot, and some of the persons there are in the film—for instance, I’m thinking of Daniel, who is this guy, very strong guy, that is in the bathtub with me, you know? He did exactly the same thing with Bauby ten years before—the real Bauby—so he could, each time, tell me—I always asking him, “Am I believable? Am I believable?” And all the medical crew were really so generous with me, just telling me exactly how were the hands, how much he could move, what muscle he could move on his head. You see, I had this very, very, almost documentary vision of what could be. It had to seem real.
One of the things that made you seem so real to me when I saw it was the way you managed to keep your face frozen in such a contorted way so realistically. That must have been very, very challenging. We’ve talked about the mental aspect, but can you talk about the physical demands of playing this character?
I didn’t believe it but, in fact, I think it’s the most exhausting part I ever acted—much more than doing three hours of hip-hop. I was completely, completely exhausted every day at the end of the day; I couldn’t do something else in the evening. I just couldn’t do anything. Because, in fact, to play somebody that doesn’t move, you have to contract all your muscle, all the time, so you’re always contracted. And, as Julian shoots without any rehearsal, he can shoot at any moment. He tries to break the professional habits, you know, of a crew, so that something new—anything—can happen at any moment. I had to be in that sort of state all the time. I couldn’t prepare myself for shots. I had to stay like that. And I also wanted to stay like that to help the other actors because, for them—I don’t know, if you have this guy, this actor, that is lying at the last moment, just after taking a coffee, you know, and talking about your new car, and “Okay, let’s go with the scene!” How can they believe? So it’s true that I tried never to move, I tried only to speak with my lid, as much as possible. Because also I knew that Julian could say to them, “Okay, let’s shoot now! Now! Now! Let’s shoot!” And I had to be ready. And, with Julian, we said it would be said it would be stupid to have five hours of makeup every morning, you know? So we found a way that I had nothing—it would take five minutes, in fact. I only had a dental prosthesis that would push the mouth down—and I wanted it to hurt, because the pain could help me to act, in fact, you know? And it was just glue for my lip. And I had an eye lens with some blood in it. That’s all. And wax on the head—wax to be sweating all the time, because he was sweating all the time. That’s all. In fact, there were two parts for me in the film. There was the first part, when you don’t see him yet, so everything was the inner-thoughts—because the other actors, they were acting with the lens, in fact; it was very hard for them, and I couldn’t help them because I had no lines, you know? And they had to look directly in the lens. So, in fact, we had this idea of doing the inner-thoughts at the same time—so I was in another room, I had a monitor, I could hear what they were saying, and Julian told me, “Just say what you have in mind.” And that’s where Florence Ben Sadoun, Bernard Chapuis, and the book helped me to try to be as close as what I could feel of the sense of humor of Bauby. So, yeah, it’s true that I sort of improvised, I invented jokes; yeah, the inner-thoughts are not written. That’s where Julian is really great—I mean, you know, so much confidence. That’s why I say you can’t do a film by your own; it’s because we were together, you know? And the guy that had the camera, he could hear my thoughts, and he would frame the acting at my thoughts. You know what I mean? One moment, I said, “Okay, I don’t want to see them anymore,” so the camera would go to the wall, you know, or to the window, or down, you know?
The film intercuts a lot between Bauby’s life before the stroke and after the stroke, which leads me to wonder whether you shot in sequence or jumped back and forth between the period, in which case it I imagine it would have been quite an emotional rollercoaster ride for you…
We shot the flashback at the end of the shooting. And it was a strange period. It was strange to do that. In fact, I was more afraid to do the flashback—it was strange. I tried again just to be a normal guy, you know? Not a great guy, or not a stupid guy, just a normal guy, not aware of the miracle of what is a human body, you know, and things like that. And there is so little flashback—there is really very little.
Although one of the most powerful scenes—
With Max, no? The father?
That, too, but when—SPOILER ALERT—you’re in the car and you suffer the actual stroke…
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that is amazing because Julian shoots very quickly—we finished ten days before schedule, you know, because he doesn’t believe in preparing something. If it’s prepared for him, it’s like if it was dead. It’s almost like his paintings, you know? I don’t know if you know his paintings, but they’re, sort of, big, huge paintings and he just [blows his breath to sound like the whoosh of a paintbrush flying through the air]. It’s more like a gesture, you know, like a scream, you know? Something like that. And the stroke at the end—I don’t know what it is to have a stroke. I don’t know what had just happened. I had to invent. It was very hard. I was afraid. But I remember that one thing that helped me is that I had the idea that the foot was stuck on the accelerator so it would go [makes a noise like the revving of an engine]. And that helped me to keep the tension of my body, the noise of the motor, you know, of the engine. It’s funny. And that’s how I found the tension, in fact. It was the idea that his foot was stuck on the [makes the revving noise again], you know?
Julian said of Bauby, “He’s kind of like Christ because he’s dying for our sins, in a way. He tells you, ‘Grab the presence. Look into your interior life.’” The film certainly makes all of us re-evaluate our priorities and think about whether or not we are living our life properly. But what do you make of his comment?
Oh, I never heard him say that. I know it’s very personal, more because of fright of death, and because he saw his father having the fright of death. I know that’s also something very important for him—the reason why he did this film. But I’m more now just every day remembering that the human body is a miracle, you know? But I’m not yet reaching God. I think that the human body is enough to believe in the absurdity and the marvelous thing of being alive, and connecting your thoughts to your body. And I think that Julian managed to do a film that doesn’t have one unique message. You know what I mean? It’s more complex, I think.
Lastly, I’m interested to know what’s next for you. According to one article I’ve read, you have vowed not to work for the next year and a half, at least as far as acting. At the same time, pundits are putting you right in the thick of the Best Actor race, which I imagine might change that. What are your plans for the future?
Well, I try to have no plans because I think that what’s marvelous about life that—it’s the meetings, you know, the encounters that you didn’t plan. If you say to yourself, “Okay,” let’s say, “I want an Oscar in ten years. So in ten years I have an Oscar…” Well, you can manage to have an Oscar, of course, but it’s not very interesting—I mean, it’s so much funnier when it happens, you know, by chance. I always say that everything is like being Cinderella for me, you know? It’s like, you know, it’s funny. It’s just so funny. At the same time, what is very important to me is to direct my own film. That’s why I have to stop acting. But something just fell on me three days ago—but I’m not allowed to say.
It has to do with acting, though?
Yeah, with acting. It’s something that you just can’t refuse, so I’m gonna act again. [laughs] Yeah, in something incredible—when you will learn it, it’s so funny, it really is great.
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