Jump to content

User:Castelamfr/Evaluate an Article

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Evaluate an article

[edit]

This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.

  • Name of article: Talk:The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film)
  • Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. I have read this nivel a few times and use it for one of my courses that I reach through Wikipedia. I am familiar with this material.

Lead

[edit]
Guiding questions

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French: Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) is a 2007 French biographical drama film directed by Julian Schnabel and written by Ronald Harwood. Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir of the same name, the film depicts Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. Bauby is played by Mathieu Amalric.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the César Awards, and received four Oscar nominations. Several critics later listed it as one of the best films of its decade. It ranks in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.

  • Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Yes
  • Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? Not as stated later in the informational box.
  • Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? no.
  • Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? It is concise.

Lead evaluation: Needs some adjustments and completion.

[edit]

Content

[edit]
Guiding questions

Plot[edit]

[edit]

The first third of the film is told from the main character's, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), or Jean-Do as his friends call him, first person perspective. The film opens as Bauby wakes from his three-week coma in a hospital in Berck-sur-Mer, France. After an initial rather over-optimistic analysis from one doctor, a neurologist explains that he has locked-in syndrome, an extremely rare condition in which the patient is almost completely physically paralyzed, but remains mentally normal. At first, the viewer primarily hears Bauby's "thoughts" (he thinks that he is speaking but no one hears him), which are inaccessible to the other characters (who are seen through his one functioning eye).

A speech therapist and physical therapist try to help Bauby become as functional as possible. Bauby cannot speak, but he develops a system of communication with his speech and language therapist by blinking his left eye as she reads a list of letters to laboriously spell out his messages, letter by letter.

Gradually, the film's restricted point of view broadens out, and the viewer begins to see Bauby from "outside", in addition to experiencing incidents from his past, including a visit to Lourdes. He also fantasizes, imagining beaches, mountains, the Empress Eugénie and an erotic feast with one of his transcriptionists. It is revealed that Bauby had been editor of the popular French fashion magazine Elle, and that he had a deal to write a book (which was originally going to be based on The Count of Monte Cristo but from a female perspective). He decides that he will still write a book, using his slow and exhausting communication technique. A woman from the publishing house with which Bauby had the original book contract is brought in to take dictation.

The new book explains what it is like to now be him, trapped in his body, which he sees as being within an old-fashioned deep-sea diving suit with a brass helmet, which is called a scaphandre in French, as in the original title. Others around see his spirit, still alive, as a "Butterfly".

The story of Bauby's writing is juxtaposed with his recollections and regrets until his stroke. We see his three children, their mother (whom he never married), his mistress, his friends, and his father. He encounters people from his past whose lives bear similarities to his own "entrapment": a friend who was kidnapped in Beirut and held in solitary confinement for four years, and his own 92-year-old father, who is confined to his own apartment, because he is too frail to descend four flights of stairs.

Bauby eventually completes his memoir and hears the critics' responses. He dies of pneumonia two days after its publication. The closing credits are accentuated by reversed shootings of breaking glacier ice (the forward versions are used in the opening credits), accompanied by the Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros song "Ramshackle Day Parade".

Cast[edit]

[edit]

Production[edit]

[edit]

The film was originally to be produced by American company Universal Studios and the screenplay was originally in English, with Johnny Depp slated to star as Bauby. According to the screenwriter, Ronald Harwood, the choice of Julian Schnabel as director was recommended by Depp. Universal subsequently withdrew, and Pathé took up the project two years later. Depp dropped the project due to scheduling conflicts with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Schnabel remained as director. The film was eventually produced by Pathé and France 3 Cinéma in association with Banque Populaire Images 7 and the American Kennedy/Marshall Company and in participation with Canal+ and CinéCinéma.

According to the New York Sun, Schnabel insisted that the movie should be in French, resisting pressure by the production company to make it in English, believing that the rich language of the book would work better in the original French, and even went so far as to learn French to make the film. Harwood tells a slightly different story: Pathé wanted "to make the movie in both English and French, which is why bilingual actors were cast"; he continues that "Everyone secretly knew that two versions would be impossibly expensive", and that "Schnabel decided it should be made in French".

Schnabel said his influence for the film was drawn from personal experience:

My father got sick and he was dying. He was terrified of death and had never been sick in his life. So he was in this bed at my house, he was staying with me, and this script arrived for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. As my father was dying, I read Ron Harwood's script. It gave me a bunch of parameters that would make a film have a totally different structure. As a painter, as someone who doesn't want to make a painting that looks like the last one I made, I thought it was a really good palette. So personally and artistically these things all came together.

Several key aspects of Bauby's personal life were fictionalized in the film, most notably his relationships with the mother of his children and his girlfriend. In reality, it was not Bauby's estranged wife who stayed by the patient's bedside while he lay almost inanimate on a hospital bed, it was his girlfriend of several years.

Reception[edit]

[edit]

The film received universal acclaim from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 94%, based on reviews from 165 critics, with the general consensus stated as, "Breathtaking visuals and dynamic performances make The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a powerful biopic." Metacritic gave the film an average score of 92/100, based on 36 reviews.

In a 2016 poll by BBC, the film was listed as one of the top 100 films since 2000 (77th position).

Top ten lists[edit]

[edit]

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.

Awards and nominations[edit]

[edit]

The film premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on 22 May, where Schnabel won the Award for Best Director. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and won a BAFTA award as well as two César Awards. Schnabel also won Best Director at the 65th Golden Globe Awards, where the film won Best Foreign Language Film. Because the film was produced by an American company, it was ineligible for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Wins

Nominations

  • Is the article's content relevant to the topic? YES. There is a plot with adequate details, There is a cast list and a commentary as of the production.
  • Is the content up-to-date? I would believe that to be the case.
  • Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? Not that I can see.

Content evaluation: I believe it is pretty complete,

[edit]

Tone and Balance

[edit]
Guiding questions
  • Is the article neutral? Yes.
  • Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? No, I read the statements to be representations of issues that happened, that is particularly true in the "production" segment of the article.
  • Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? Not that I can see
  • Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?. I don't think so

Tone and balance evaluation: Adequate

[edit]

Sources and References

[edit]
Guiding questions
  • Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? Yes, were needed, that is the stem and the production area as well as the awards and receptions. Not in the plot where it could be considered redundant.
  • Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? Yes, there are 21 references.
  • Are the sources current? There are references as recent as 2018
  • Check a few links. Do they work? Yes they do (the ones I tried)

Sources and references evaluation: Adequate

[edit]

Organization

[edit]
Guiding questions
  • Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? Yes
  • Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? Not that I saw
  • Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? Yes

Organization evaluation Adequate

[edit]

Images and Media

[edit]
Guiding questions
  • Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? Yes, one the cover of the film
  • Are images well-captioned? Yes
  • Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? Not sure, but it is within the informational box, supported by all information pertaining to the topic.
  • Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? Yes,

Images and media evaluation Adequate

[edit]

Checking the talk page

[edit]
Guiding questions
  • What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? There is a single discussion among two editors about a controversy segment that has been since deleted from a previous version of this article
  • How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? C-class within the Wiki Project Film
  • How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?. Not quite sure how to answer, I think there is some small room for improvement based on the criteria outlined for this becoming a B article (within the talk page)

Talk page evaluation Needs some work

[edit]

Overall impressions

[edit]
Guiding questions
    • What is the article's overall status? C Class
  • What are the article's strengths? I believe is a good page as it related to the information provided, there are adequate links, references and comments which are neutral and organized adequately without giving up the emotional and uplifting segment of the entire book / movie adaptation.
  • How can the article be improved? Needs to comply with the B criteria as shown here

Criteria for B-Class status[edit]

[edit]

B-Class film articles are expected to meet all of the following criteria:

  1. The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary.
    It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. The use of citation templates such as {{cite web}} is not required, but the use of <ref></ref> tags is encouraged. At minimum, try to include author, title, publisher and access date.
  2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies.
    It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for a Good article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.
  3. The article has a defined structure.
    Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.
  4. The article is reasonably well-written.
    The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but it certainly need not be "brilliant". The Manual of Style need not be followed rigorously.
  5. The article contains supporting materials where appropriate.
    Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Tables and an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
  • How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? Well developed but needs some work.

Overall evaluation It is a good article I would attempt improving it to B class status.

[edit]

Optional activity

[edit]
  • Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

with four tildes — ~~~~

  • Link to feedback:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Castelamfr/Evaluate_an_Article&oldid=950901842"