Max Von Sydow read Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly before he signed on to play the role of Bauby’s father in the film version of Bauby's story. Comparing the two, the critically acclaimed veteran actor believes the script actually surpassed the book that inspired it. “The book is extraordinary because of the way it’s written and I think the script is even better. As literature, I think the script is even better. What is really interesting is, of course, is the way it has been written. Just imagine what time it must have taken him and just checking about what he had written. And, ‘No, that’s wasn’t good enough. I would like to change this.’ And then what a long time it must’ve taken to discuss letter for letter for letter like this [blinking]. That is patience, really.”
The film follows French Elle editor Bauby’s final months with a fully functional brain trapped inside a body destroyed by a stroke. Bauby was able to express himself by responding with the blink of his one good eye to letters of the alphabet spoken aloud by first his therapist, and ultimately a woman hired to help him write his memoir. Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly took 14 months to write and was published just days before he died in 1997.
One of the most emotionally heart-wrenching scenes in big screen adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a phone conversation between Max Von Sydow as Papinou and Mathieu Amalric as his hospitalized son who’s unable to speak in response to his father’s questions. Von Sydow’s unable to describe how he prepared for that scene, but believes the end result is just wonderful. “I was very taken by what [screenwriter] Ron Harwood had done very, very much,” said Von Sydow. “Sometimes if I’m not taken in by a screenplay when I read it on page 25, sometimes I give up because I feel that you have to be part of the story. If you are not at that stage, you could lose the film totally. But here I was taken immediately. And also then when I came to these two little scenes, I found them as a gem really - and also just because it’s true."
Von Sydow’s father was 50 when he was born which meant that by the time he was 10, his father was already considered an ‘elderly gentleman,’ as Von Sydow puts it. However the actor said he didn’t really need to draw on any personal experiences in order to understand his character. “I think the scenes are so clear and they did give so much in the screenplay that that was not a problem. We shot both scenes in one day. We shot the second scene first, and the first scene last. This is the way it almost always is.”
Although his part is a small one, Von Sydow was happy with how fleshed out the character was both on the page and in the film. “It’s not just one cameo. It is a cameo with a development because the situations are so different. In the first one, it is a happy situation in a flashback with father and son teasing each other but showing their warm relationship and their love to each other. And then the second one is after the catastrophe where the father is desperate because he understands that he will never be able to see his son again. He will never be able to hear his voice or talk to him really, and he tries to cheer him up but he says the wrong things,” laughed Von Sydow while reflecting back on the dialogue from the phone call scene.
The amount of screen time he’ll have never matters when Von Sydow’s considering a project. “To me, it’s important to have a good part,” explained Von Sydow. “It doesn’t have to be of a certain size. I was brought up in a country where the star system, for example, did not exist. I was brought up within the municipal theaters in Sweden where you played everything – big parts, small parts - all the time. It was not a matter of always playing the lead. You did something and you were creative, and that was a wonderful school at the time. But I’m not looking for leading parts at my age. I shouldn’t because there aren’t that many leading parts of elderly gentlemen and those which are there are very much like each other, unfortunately.”
Despite the fact Bauby’s story is a sad one, Von Sydow believes the film is very positive. “It’s not about death,” said Von Sydow. “It’s not about being caught in a strait jacket. It is about wanting to overcome the difficulties in your life and about this hero who does it so superbly with a little help, luckily, from a nurse with good patience. But I think this is a very positive story. I hope people will accept it as that.”
Asked to share his perspective on the state of cinema today, Von Sydow candidly replied, “I think there are problems. Of course, there are big problems. Where do we get money to do the small stories or the stories about people like Jean Dominique Bauby? I believe it’s easier to get money for the big spectacles and action films, which are technically interesting or challenging but which don’t really teach us very much about the human situation or our situation in the world. They don’t give us very much encouragement or hope I’m afraid.”
As for the younger generation of actors hoping for a career that lasts as long as Von Sydow’s, the actor had only a few words of advice to share. “Acting is something you cannot teach theoretically. You have to do it. So that’s the advice: work, work, work, work. One word.”
