Scaphandre et le papillon, Le (2007)

aka The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
A very inspiring movie. It depicts the struggle to connect, to the world and to our own soul. Capturing this as an image is done very cleverly in this movie with a brilliant cinematography and wonderful dialog that inspired from the book itself.

Before I confuse you more, the story(it is a real life story) in short goes like this. It's about a 40 something man, an editor of ELLE, who gets locked up in his body, a medical condition called, "locked-in-syndrome". This is described to be the closest to being buried alive. His brain fully functions but the only way he can communicate is by blinking of his left eye. The only part of his body that he could move. And with that he manages to write a book, of his frivolous life before and of his dreams he creates in his head being locked in.

The movie is shown from the view he gets of this one eye that he could blink, or rotate but restricted beyond. Imagine see the world with one eye when you cant move your body or neck. We see how the people come in and leave while he struggle to be in sync with the reality following them through his restricted gaze. And when that is broken he falls back into his own world of imagination and memory. The dialog is equally brilliant. It borrows the intense words from his book, "The diving bell and the butterfly" that he is writing. And with a background of the repetition of the french letters based on frequency of usage E, S, A, R, I, N... it constantly reminds us the difficulty with which such intense ideas are expressed. The sound track is wonderful too... I loved the song "All the world is green". Though the story sounds very sad, its narrated in a high spirit so don't delay in watching it thinking it will be too gloomy.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

If I would have to describe the movie in one sentence it would be "It's a wonderful movie". Frank Capra shows that a brilliant movie could be made using the very first principles and a ultra-simple storyline. Now this movie with a breathtaking climax has all the features of a great and legendary movie. The story starts with a simple and confused guy not knowing what to do in his life does everything that comes in his way and sticks to his small town without a hint of where he is going or what he is going to get. But all the things that he secretly wants in his life fall in place as if through some magic. This magic turns out to be a very rare kind of magic in the sense that you dont even know that it exists. This movie reflects this magic in the end.