Jean-Dominique Bauby was a successful and popular magazine publisher when, at the age of 42, he suffered a massive stroke, leaving him almost completely paralysed. Almost, since he was still able to control one part of his anatomy – his left eye. Remarkably, with the assistance of a group of therapists and helpers, he was able to ‘dictate’ a memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, in this state. The book is a unique piece of non-fiction, singular in its conveyance of what it was like to have so-called ‘locked-in syndrome’.

A remarkable book, but not one which would immediately scream out to be turned into a motion picture. So it is to director Julian Schnabel’s immense credit that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly does justice to its source text. At times compellingly tender, other times somewhat darkly comic, it successfully steers a path away from over-sentimentality to present the story in the best, and perhaps only, way possible.

Much of the film, inevitably, is viewed from the first-person perspective of Bauby, played remarkably by Mathieu Amalric. Not that you would initially know though, as we do not see his face until he glimpses a reflection of himself in a window – we are shocked by what he has been reduced to, as is he, likening his appearance to having been dipped in formaldehyde. The use of the first-person view is uniquely rendered by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski – complete with blinking, delay in the shifting of focusing, and at one stage the blur of tears rinsing the screen. In one horrifying scene, we see a doctor stitching up his right eye, naturally from the inside – as visceral and fleshy as anything David Cronenberg has done.

Bauby ‘dictates’ by having the other party read the alphabet, letters ordered according to frequency of use, until he blinks, indicating the letter he wishes to use, until words and then sentences begin to be formed. At times early on, the subtitling becomes a little confused – when ‘merci’ is being spelled out, the subtitles read T H A N K S. But this is only to be expected, and becomes less of a problem as the film goes on. American director Schnabel has been at pains to point out that the film exists only in French, learning the language especially in order to make it in its original form. And there is something more poetic, almost more romantic, about the alphabet recited in French as opposed to English – especially if it is a beautiful French woman doing the reading, as Bauby (always one with an eye for the ladies) is keen to note.

The film is able to explore the various implications of Bauby’s state; unable to speak to his immobile father on the telephone, play with his children, or merely to speak to men delivering to his room a new speakerphone. This is the eponymous diving bell – a coffin sinking him to the bottom of the sea, all the time his fast, active mind unable to articulate itself from its static metal case. And in one especially painful moment, we see the mother of his children having to act as intermediary translator when his mistress telephones his hospital bed; his refusal to rebuff her advances, despite everything, shows that he is no hero – just a flawed, selfish man like any other.

One pair of scenes stand out more than others. A pre-stroke Bauby goes to visit his immobile father Papinou, played with typical pathos by Max Von Sydow. Bauby is very much his father’s son – quick witted, sarcastic, with an eye for the ladies. But Papinou is now ‘locked in’ himself – he is unable to leave his apartment, so Bauby goes in order to give him a shave, where they trade fairly innocuous verbal blows. The significance of the scene is illustrated later, when Papinou calls Bauby’s hospital room, and the two men are, for differing reasons, unable to fully articulate themselves. But there is a common, unspoken bond there, and it is at this point the film punches home the true tragedy of the situation; Bauby, for all of his sexual philandering and bad life choices is still a son, as well as a father, now deprived of being able to conduct relationships with people in a conventional way.

Julian Schnabel has made a very, very special film here. I immediately thought of one of the all time great films, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, in which a man faced with the death sentence of cancer is first driven into despair, but then comes to find meaning to his life in creating something – a children’s playground. In that film, the central character Watanabe is no saint – emotionally distant, a workaholic with little time for others – but in his perilous state comes to realise that maybe before he wasn’t really living, or engaging with life. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly deals with a similar subject matter, in a similarly subtle, affecting way; Bauby may have found himself trapped in a straightjacket, but it made him realise the fleeting nature of life, the painful loss of experience to memory, but the need to find new joys in life, whatever one’s situation.

Paul Thomas Anderson can easily be accused of being a ‘critic’s director’; his films are never populist, usually entirely lacking in easily-understandable narrative structure, and stylistically innovative enough to be labelled ‘arty’ by the majority. There Will Be Blood is no exception; always seemingly on the verge of being fully comprehensible, yet daring and complex enough to still demand the greatest attention in the viewer.

There was a time when P.T.A. was being bandied around as the ‘new Robert Altman’, but this film should be the final nail in that particular label’s coffin (though this film is dedicated to the late director). The influence of his mentor could be felt in Boogie Nights and Magnolia: both ensemble pieces, with large star casts masterfully rotated. But Anderson was also developing his own signature style, which perhaps became more obvious with Punch-Drunk Love, his superlative 2002 dark comedy, whose hugely distinctive visuals and use of sound left a great impression from what was a surprisingly straightforward tale.

There is, on the surface of it, quite a conventional storyline here too: Daniel Plainview is a self-labelled ‘oil man’, who as a young man digging for silver comes across a large crude oil deposit, inspiring him initially to amateurly extract the oil, and later to set up his own drilling company with proper equipment and hired hands. As he becomes more and more successful, his ambition grows and he sets about trying to build a larger and larger oil empire, distancing himself from the larger companies by claiming himself a ‘family man’ running ‘family business’.

We quickly learn, however, that this is bogus; his ‘son’, whom he parades in front of potential investors, is not his, merely a prop to improve his image. When a young man, Paul Sunday, tells him of his family’s oil-rich land, Plainview travels there to purchase the property under the pretence of wanting it to hunt quail on. We begin to see what kind of character we are dealing with: selfish, a compulsive liar, Machiavellian to the point of inhumanity, driven only by the prospect of more oil, and more money. Plainview reckons without Sunday’s twin brother, Eli, who fancies himself as a Churchman and faith healer, and immediately cottons on to Plainview’s plan, demanding a much larger sum of money for the land, in the knowledge that Plainview will cough up.

This is the basic setup of the film, and to describe further narrative points may be to spoil the real joy of watching, since it is almost impossible to outguess where it is leading the viewer. Like Punch-Drunk Love, what seems like a simple, conventional story takes enough twists and turns to constantly wrong-foot even the most perceptive of watchers. This is, in large part, due to the strange presence at the centre of the film: Daniel Plainview. He is a man with no past, and seemingly no future other than one of relentless financial expansion. Seldom does he refer to anything in his life, and when he does it seems to be a fiction of convenience: inventing his ‘wife’s’ death in childbirth to garner sympathy, for example.

Citizen Kane comparisons have been made by other reviewers elsewhere: it has been pointed out that the theme of the corrupting infuence of money at the expense of a character’s soul happens to Daniel Plainview as it does to Charles Foster Kane. The film does share a common timespan with Welles’ classic, starting around the turn of the twentieth century, and ending with its protagonist as an old, lonely man in his empty mansion, taking in the Great Depression of the 1930s. But Plainview is no tragic figure like Kane, as he is entirely devoid of any redeeming qualities; he has no time for family, for friends, for women, for leisure or enjoyment, for anything other than the pursuit of oil. There is, thus, no Rosebud – no crack revealing the human underneath the skin of the monster.

Daniel Day-Lewis once again gives a bravura performance in the central role, less over-the-top compared with his extraordinary turn in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, but his quiet pent-up rage is all the more terrifying for being more hidden in Plainview; when he finally does explode, you feel it hit you all the harder. In his finest moment in the film, he delivers a monologue where he shows his contempt for all other people, and his desire to see himself succeed while everybody else fails – and finally we see the grotesque monster in its true form; entirely devoid of compassion, life, love. His performance is so overpowering that Paul Dano’s excellent turn as preacher Eli Sunday appears to have been largely ignored.

There has been much praise heaped on the film, and Day-Lewis’ performance in particular. But great acting demands a director capable of controlling it, and once again Paul Thomas Anderson has shown that he is one of the finest actor’s directors working today. But he is also one of the great contemporary visual stylists, too. His composition of shots can be quite breathtaking, and the slow, languid movements of the camera, frequently only revealing the spatial dimensions of a scene piece-by-piece, are especially daring, recalling not just Welles but by turns Kubrick, Scorsese, Fellini even the granddaddy of them all, Jean Renoir. There are noticeably long takes, but also frantic fast cuts, elegant pans – Anderson, with DP Robert Elswit, seems capable of executing them all with ease.

One reason Punch-Drunk Love was so distinctive was the fantastic percussive score, composed by frequent collaborator Jon Brion. Here, the music was composed by Radiohead multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood, who seems to have taken his cue from Anderson’s prior work, whilst adding his own touches. The film opens with an abrasive screech of strings, and the first reel plays to pizzicato violins, giving an unsettling air to proceedings. The score then is a mish mash of Brahms quartet, percussion, and more abrasive string parts. It is a truly outstanding soundtrack, and, like Brion’s work, gives Anderson’s film its rhythm and feel. It is a shame that it will not be eligible for the Oscars, as it would surely win.

It is tempting to label There Will Be Blood as a masterpiece, and it already has by some noted critics. But I have my doubts; I left the cinema in a daze, illustrating just what an extraordinary experience to watch it is. But the Coens’ No Country For Old Men, Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE gave me more of a feeling of satisfaction, that I had watched something truly great. P.T. Anderson may well be the best director in the US, Daniel Day-Lewis the best actor working in English, and There Will Be Blood a fine film, but it is perhaps too difficult a film to be a bona-fide masterpiece. But it is such a demanding watch on first viewing, that maybe I just need to see it again….