framing creates powerful perspectives in Diving Bell

For over a half an hour, I spent the movie peering from behind Jean-Do’s left eye. The fantastic cinematography created such a realistic effect that I felt tense and frustrated at times, as though I was trapped in a body that could not move and was unable to speak. But in an instant, we were snatched out of his paralyzed body and taken to a moment in his former life.
Jean-Do’s therapist, a young woman devoted to communicating with him no matter how tedious it became, sat beside him in the hospital room with a notepad and pencil to dictate his yes or no answers to simple questions. The framing of this scene was confined, alternating between the therapist’s attractive face – specifically her eyes – and her hands clasping the pencil and the paper. Clearly, the framing of a shot indicates exactly what the director would like us to see – mostly her eyes which gaze directly into his. For these moments, he has her undivided attention and, because he has no other distractions, she has his as well. The world outside continues on unnoticed by us because, as far as we are concerned, time is gauged according to the therapist’s questions and Jean-Do’s blinks. There is silence besides her voice, the pencil on paper, and Jean-Do’s audible thoughts, and there is nothing to see except a pair of eyes and hands. The framing has slowed me down and forced me to take notice of the little details of her face.
Jean-Do has barely any movement of his head, limiting his view of this woman to only a level frame of her face and a high-angle frame of her notepad. Within both shots, she nearly fills the frame, narrowing Jean-Do’s world to a single individual – not even able to see the room they are occupying.
With a final frame nearly filled by the therapist’s face, she asks the question that sends him back to a day when his world was too wide and fast to notice anyone’s eyes: “Were you the editor of Elle magazine?”
The framing instantly changes: There is a walkway bordered by strong pillars and the confident stride of a man walking away from the camera, revealing not only the back of his head but the shape of his shoulders and back under a dark sports jacket. Pulling even further away, the next frame is of a building and an expensive car parked along the road. Jean-Do enters an open lobby with high ceilings and bustling photographers and models, and within a sequence of cuts, one of the frames shows us his face. It is not a close-up, like the view we had of the therapist. He is not even in the center of the frame. We see Jean-Do from the waist-up in a medium shot, greeting a photographer and casually taking in his surroundings while he proceeds to move around the room. The frame quickly ends as others soon replace it – frames of a model upon a platform, photo prints tacked on a wall, and designers adjusting models’ wardrobes. This is the sharpest contrast we have yet seen to Jean-Do’s current condition. The wide frames show us more people, movement and color than we saw in all previous scenes combined. His previous life was based in personal interactions and urgent, tight schedules. The speed of his stride and the seconds between each cut indicates the pace of his former lifestyle. Now I further understand his frustration – he has never sat still in his life. Now time is stretching before him and his eye can only focus on one face at a time.