‘Dramatic tone’ as the emotional core of a screenplay: The case of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

This article delves into the topic of the central emotion within a screenplay, and \r\nthe extent to which it can grant the work coherence. It will demonstrate that the \r\nemotional core of the story consists in the profound, extended emotion that stems \r\ndirectly from its main theme. It will make these arguments by analysing the screen-\r\nplay for Julian Schnabel’s The Diving bell and the Butterfly (2007), the screen \r\nadaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir regarding his experience of ‘locked-in’ \r\nsyndrome. As Ronald Harwood’s screenplay changes the thematic focus of the orig-\r\ninal novel, comparing the two texts reveals how different themes invoke different \r\nfundamental emotions. The article, drawing especially on the narrative theory devel-\r\noped in the screenwriting textbooks by Robert McKee (1997) and John Truby (2007), \r\nelaborates on an issue that has been ignored by other analyses of the movie: from \r\nthe open-ended story of self-reflection that is told in the book, Harwood gets a close-\r\nended story of rebirth. The article highlights how the tension towards the protago-\r\nnist’s internal goal determines the emotional nucleus of the plot. It also suggests that the emotional core is informed by ‘dramatic tone’ and argues that it consists in the \r\n‘desire of justice’ regarding the main character’s destiny.