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Unbearable Lightness of Being, The
Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliet Binoche star in this adaptation of Milan Kundera's renowned novel
A lengthy, erotically charged adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel from writer-director Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff)and co-scripted by veteran screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (Belle De Jour, Le Retour De Martin Guerre). Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Tomas, a surgeon in 60s Prague. Effusive and sexually vigorous with lover Sabina (Olin), Tomas' life changes with the advent of two very different events. Visiting the country one day, he meets and falls genuinely in love with waitress Tereza (Binoche). Although he leaves her - to retain his principles of freedom, from attachment and committment - she comes to him in Prague. Eventually they are married. The other key event in Tomas' life is, of course, the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. This new repression forms the backdrop to Tomas and Tereza's relationship, and that of Tomas and Sabina - who he resumes relations with in Geneva, to reiterate his philisophy that sex is distinct from love. Matters are further complicated when Tereza, who has become a photographer, forges an unlikely relationship with Sabina. Although Kaufman and Carrière's screenplay reworks Kundera's more experimental novel into a linear narrative, and trims out some of its more laboured philisophising, this is a fairly immediate adaptation. The filmmakers sensibly made the decision to focus the film more on personality and inter-personal relations, with attention paid to the emotion elicited by extreme political circumstances. Like the book, the finely crafted film oozes eroticism, but it balances this with a striking evocation of a difficult time in Czech history. The trio of central actors, meanwhile, inhabit their characters effectively, despite the mess of accents (an Englishman, a French woman and a Swedish woman all give their English lines in their own versions of a Czech accent). Verdict A heady combination of sex and politics that warrants attention, although the lengthy running time may try the patience of some watchers. |
