Visual Metaphors in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

If there's one thing The Diving Bell and The Butterfly exceeds in, it's the use of visual metaphors. These uses of "picture-language" range from the obvious to the truly bizarre and downright senseless. For this entry, I'd like to focus on what is arguably the strangest metaphoric image of all: the ice shelves.

The ice shelves appear twice in this movie: once, in the first half of the movie, they are shown breaking off and falling into the ocean. At the end of the movie, they are shown again, but with one huge difference: the footage is shown in reverse. When the ice flows first fall, Jean says that "His life feels like a string of near-misses," suggesting that the ice represents his pride and sense of self. Following this interpretation through, it makes sense that these things would be rebuilt by rising above his significant handicap to write a novel. What doesn't make sense, however, is the placement of this "rebuilding" clip. It's shown at the end of the film, after Jean dies. The director was so committed to the initial use of this analogy that he was willing to wrench us from the film, yet he saves the final punch for the end? Perhaps he's suggesting that, in death, Jean's life is rebuilt. That would certainly give the film some Christian warm-fuzzies.

Another thing that confuses me about this metaphor is why in the world it was chosen. The metaphors of a diving bell and a butterfly make perfect sense: his body has trapped him, but his imagination breaks him free. These ice selves are significantly more difficult to figure out than that. Are they suggesting that Jean's locked-in syndrome actually contributed to global warming? And that, in death, he was able to save the artic from melting? Of course not, this isn't based on the personal memoirs of Al Gore. So why ice? Why not buildings being demolished or termites taking down a wall? I just don't get it.