THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
A Film Review by Manavendra K. Thakur
Copyright 1988 by Manavendra K. Thakur and The Tech
Reproduced with permission.
1988 168 mins. US-France-Norway English & Czechoslovakian with English Subtitles Rated R Dolby Stereo Color 35mm/1.85
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Derek de Lint, Erland Josephson, Pavel Landovsky, Donald Moffat, Daniel Olbrychski, Stellan Skarsgard, Tomek Bork, Bruce Myers, Pavel Slaby, Pascale Kalensky, Jacques Ciron, Anne Lonnberg, Laszlo Szabo, Vladimir Valenta, Clovis Cornillac, Leon Lissek, Consuelo de Haviland.
Credits: Directed by Philip Kaufman. Produced by Saul Zaentz. Screenplay by Jean-Claude Carriere and Philip Kaufman. Adapted from the Milan Kundera novel. Directory of Photography: Sven Nykvist, A.S.C. Supervising Film Editor: Walter Murch. Costume Design: Ann Roth. Production Design: Pierre Guffroy. Original music and arrangements by Mark Adler. Musical selections from the works of Leos Janacek.
Studio: The Saul Zaentz Company
Distributor: Orion Pictures Corporation
9 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
(212) 980-1117
Upon examining the list of credits for this film, bells and lights should be going off in every direction. Saul Zaentz (AMADEUS, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST) produced. The film was shot by Sven Nykvist, the "painter with light" who has won universal praise for his work with Ingmar Bergman and other directors. The film was edited under the watchful eye of Walter Murch, who won Oscars and acclaim for his editing and sound work in films like APOCALYPSE NOW, THX-1138, and THE CONVERSATION. The cast is a potpourri of prominent and excellent actors from England, Czechoslovakia, France, Sweden, and Holland. The director, Philip Kaufman, is American; he's known mainly for the 1978 remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and THE RIGHT STUFF. Finally, the script is based on the internationally reknowned novel written in 1984 by Milan Kundera, a Czechoslovakian expatriate living in France. Seeing the list of all that high-power talent is almost enough to make the breath quicken and the mouth water; the potential for greatness seems ready to explode in an artistic flowering.
Then the intrigue of the subject matter arises: just what is a film with a title like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" about? One borrows a copy of the novel from a friend to satiate the desire to know. On a strict narrative level, it turns out that the book concerns the erotic liaisons between a brilliant brain surgeon in Czechoslovakia named Tomas, his wife Tereza, and his mistress Sabina, as well as Sabina's lover Franz. But this is no trashy Harlequin Romance. Their romantic exploits are set against the 1968 Soviet invasion of their homeland, which abruptly terminated the newly-found artistic and political freedoms during the period of "socialism with a human face" known as the Prague Spring.
But then an unpleasant realization sinks in. The path from the novel, which quite deserves all the praise it has been given, to a film is fraught with many possible missteps. Why? Because interspersed within the romance and politics are Kundera's numerous philosophical asides and metaphysical discussions -- which form the real core and gem of the novel. Consider this excerpt from Part Two (which is entitled "Body and Soul"):
[Chapter 2]
A long time ago, man would listen in amazement to the sound
of regular beats in his chest, never suspecting what they
were.... The body was a cage, and inside that cage was
something which looked, listened, feared, thought, and
marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the
body had been accounted for, was the soul.
Today, of course, the body is no longer unfamiliar.... The
old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific
terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete
prejudice.
But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his
stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical
illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away.
[Chapter 3]
Tereza tried to see herself through her body. That is why,
from girlhood on, she would stand before the mirror so
often.... She forgot that the nose was merely the nozzle of a
hose that took oxygen to the lungs; she saw it as the true
expression of her nature.
Even in this abridged passage, one can see how deftly Kundera integrates his ruminations with his character's actions. That is what gives the novel and its title substance and depth; no other novel in recent memory about the travails of young lovers begins with a three-page reflection on Nietzchean idea of eternal return and Parmenides' division of the world into pairs of opposites. And Kundera's remarkable word choices and striking juxtapositions elevate the novel to its proper place as a great work of modern literature.
But therein lies the problem with the film: any filmmaker, no matter how talented, will most likely be at a loss as how to transfer the full richness of the above excerpt to the filmic medium. The best one can probably hope for is an intelligent and sensitive recounting of the narrative in a manner that remains faithful to the more metaphysical aspects of the book. While Ingmar Bergman or Alain Resnais (HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR) might be the first choice to guide the novel to the screen, Philip Kaufman and his actors leave no doubt that they have made as good a film as possible from as unfilmable a novel as this. Unfortunately, the film leaves one hanging for more.
Perhaps the best scene in which this becomes evident is the scene near the beginning after Tereza has just unexpectedly arrived at Tomas' apartment in Prague. As she and Tomas make love for the first time, she screams loudly in his ear. In the book, the scream "was not an expression of sensuality.... What was screaming is fact was the naive idealism of her love trying to banish all contradictions, banish the duality of body and soul, banish perhaps even time." In the film, however, all one hears is Tereza shouting for a second or so. There is no indication whatsoever of the metaphysical significance of Tereza's screams. This is indicative of how straightforward the narrative has been made in the film, and it is painful to sit through knowing that so much is lacking on the screen. The book's central categorization of all things into "heavy" and "light" and Kundera's constant exploration of the boundaries of the two is so subdued in the film as to be virtually absent.
Yet what remains on the screen does have strengths of its own. The acting in the film is uniformly superb, from Daniel Day-Lewis as Tomas, French actress Juliette Binoche as Tereza, and noted Swedish actress Lena Olin as Sabina down to the few moments the popular Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski has onscreen as an Interior Ministry official who tries to convince Tomas to recant an article critical of the communists that Tomas had written years before. Kaufman draws thoroughly on the skills of his actors, and there is no mistaking that this most American of directors has successfully produced a quintessentially European character study.
Technically, the film is dazzling in several moments. In one scene, Tereza hallucinates while swimming in a pool that the row of women exercising at the poolside have been replaced by a grinning Tomas forcing the now nude women to do squat-thrusts. The camera shows the women from Tereza's point of view as she alternately surfaces and dives into the water. The crisp colors and the sharp, seamless editing between the real and the unreal as the camera bobs above and below the water surface makes up in visual appeal for the loss of the inner meaning (explained in the book) of Tereza's hallucination.
Also, the sequence in which Tereza and Tomas photograph the Soviet tanks and troops as they roll into Prague is a breathtaking cinematic tour-de-force. Kaufman and his crew brilliantly integrate archival footage with their own recreation of the Russian invasion -- complete with authentic clothing, props, automobiles, and tanks. Daniel Day-Lewis is even provided with a gold tooth crown that was popular among Czech men at the time. Kaufman's crew maintained such a high degree of accuracy that Kundera, who lived through the invasion, could not distinguish archival footage of the invasion from scenes of Kaufman's recreation. During this sequence, Kaufman integrates virtually every technical aspect of filmmaking -- lighting, photography, editing, sound, color, art direction, acting -- with such astonishing clarity that the sheer cinematic strength of those scenes carries the film in a direction the book never could have.
And the narrative does manage to include some of Kundera's philosophical gems. In one dinner table conversation, Tomas castigates those who initially welcomed the communist regime for not following the mythical example of Oedipus, who, says Tomas, at least had the courage to punish himself (by gouging out his eyes and leaving home) when he realized that he had killed his father and slept with his mother. Kaufman also deserves accolades for the caring sensitivity with which he brings the nudity and eroticism of the book to the screen. That Kaufman manages to avoid cheap exploitation in an industry that revels at every opportunity to increase box office appeal is in of itself a major accomplishment.
Unfortunately, by the end of the film's 168 minutes, all of the film's inner strengths fail to compensate for the loss of the inner secrets of Kundera's novel. Kundera himself has said that "If the novel has a function, it is to discover the ambiguity of things. My obsession as a novelist is to transform all answers into questions." That ambiguity is, sadly, missing from the screen translation. Kaufman had the blessing of Kundera's intimate involvement and approval of the choices he made while writing the script, and Kaufman also benefited from Kundera's experience with filmmaking (Kundera was once a professor at the Prague National Film School, where Milos Forman was among his students). With all the talent involved in the making of this film, Kaufman has achieved what to him must be a supreme personal triumph. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that one must be familiar with Kundera's novel to fully appreciate the qualities that made the story of Tomas, Tereza, Sabina, and Prague so memorably special.
Filmography of Philip Kaufman:
GOLDSTEIN [Co-director with
Benjamin Manaster] 1965 85 mins.
FEARLESS FRANK 1969 79 mins.
THE GREAT NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA RAID 1971 91 mins.
THE WHITE DAWN 1974 110 mins.
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS 1978 115 mins.
THE WANDERERS 1979 117 mins.
THE RIGHT STUFF 1983 192 mins.
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING 1988 168 mins.
As is undoubtedly apparent from the filmography, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING is a departure from the material that Philip Kaufman has previously worked on (except, perhaps, for his 1983 adaptation of Tom Wolfe's bestseller). His films have only recently begun to attract critical attention.
Manavendra K. Thakur
{rutgers,decvax!genrad,ihnp4}!mit-eddie!thakur
thakur@eddie.mit.edu
thakur@athena.mit.edu
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