(Le scaphandre et le papillon) One of the best and certainly most beautifully made films of the year, Julian Schnabel’s third feature, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is the arrival of a true, full-on filmmaker. I’ve seen it twice on screen and twice on DVD, and it’s full of itself in the best possible way: Schnabel’s character, his created persona as an artist and taker-of-the-air, is evidenced as ever more genuine by the evidence here as life and beauty and texture are celebrated as in few other films in recent months. It’s a story about a man who tells the story of his life with the flutters of his eyelid: the movie flutters like a hummingbird’s heart. There’d be so much for you and I to talk about this great movie if you’d seen it already. With Mathieu Amalric, Max von Sydon, Marie Josee Croze, Emmanuelle Seigner. 112m. (Ray Pride)
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” opens Friday.