The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I interrupt my parade of guest writers to bring you my latest review at Pajiba. And just to mix things up, here's a paragraph that I wrote for it but ended up leaving out:

Schnabel said he was drawn to make Diving Bell partly because of his father's difficulty accepting mortality in his last days, and because he himself has "always had a problem with death." Join the club. It's the almost universal fear of not just death but complete lack of control that gives Bauby's story its force. Schnabel occasionally pulls back from the overwhelming nature of the condition to show its more quotidian frustrations, as when a fly lands on Bauby's face while others in the room talk amongst themselves. He stares at the pest with his one good eye (and feels like he's shaking his head to remove it), but the fly may as well have landed on a bowl of fruit for all the danger it feels, and it casually explores his nose until someone else notices and shoos it away.