I am here one day, and on the next, I am gone.
Yet I am part of a community, a society, and a species, that will continue after I am dead. I live in the immeasurable debt and preparation of those who have gone before, and I make a way for those who will follow me.
Thanks to the construction of a society by those who have lived before me, I am able to experience a vast array of pleasures, easily and regularly: the joy of learning in vast libraries, delicious and abundant food and drink, and a comfortable and stable home environment, filled with people I love.
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The 1988 film The Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on a novel of the same name by Milan Kundera, is a beautiful and heady examination of such issues of living, death, individualism and society, through the story of Tomas, a surgeon (Daniel Day-Lewis), his wife Tereza (Juliette Binoche), Tomas’s lover Sabina (Lena Olin) and their dog Karenin. This drama unfolds against the backdrop of the 1968 ‘Prague Spring’, in which the people of Czechoslovakia rose up against the Soviet powers who controlled them, and were consequently repressed by an influx of tanks and troops from Warsaw Pact powers. Tomas, who writes a tract comparing the Communists to Oedipus, is instructed to sign a retraction for his radical piece, which he refuses to do. As a result, he loses his job as a surgeon, and moves out to the countryside with Tereza, where they live and work together, away from the complications of urban life and politics. Life turns, with the cycles of nature, in seasons: through friendship, love, and loss.
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I watch this film in my home, and feel deeply moved by its clarity and resonance. Undoubtedly, I reflect, I live a very fortunate life. I am out of range of the oppressions of authoritarian regimes, yet I too am capable of coming face to face with the rock-face of freedom itself: the horror that allows both true authenticity and self-discovery, and simultaneously threatens to break the human spirit against it. My body has the capacity for an incomprehensible range of experiences. Running through the fields of the English countryside, or the deeply vibrant smell of fresh coffee: these sensations bring me into the present moment, shocking me into clarity.
And yet, like Tereza, I am so often unable to attain the ‘lightness’ that allows Tomas to experience life’s pleasure so fully. I repeatedly cling to rusty anchors of justice, guilt, jealousy and stubbornness, which eclipse the bare reality of life and its sensory beauty, replacing them with myopia, distraction and obsession. With the seemingly endless and multiple narratives that run on in the mind, the prospect of quiet — silence, even — can seem to be an ultimate object of desire. As the Oedipal myth dictates, in order to ascend to a position to control our world, part of us wants to overthrow — kill, even — the very elements, structures and stories that brought about our existence. Thus, the Communists sought a new world, free of the oppressions and tyrannies of the class system of nineteenth-century Europe. By the time their dream had materialised into the political reality of the twentieth-century USSR, they had cause to ‘put out their eyes’: their narratives had become, in turn, tools for oppression.
Beneath the ideology, in any society, there exists the freshness of human life: often buried, but still capable of germination. Philip Kaufman’s film makes much of the concept of nakedness, and the willingness of different characters to remove their clothes and perform without covering — in front of a camera, a lover, or both — is deeply revealing of their personalities on multiple levels. Tereza’s coyness in her encounter with Sabina makes a scene of startling emotional power: mirrors, veils and lenses frame, reflect, and contain the vulnerability of the naked body in the gaze of another, powerful, naked human being. Yet the experience is shattered by the arrival of Sabina’s boyfriend at the apartment, and the rushing-in of everyday social forces once more. Sabina casually introduces Tereza to Franz as if nothing of deep consequence was taking place, and time closes in again to prosaic flow. This is a ‘moment of being’: immensely fragile, but in equal proportion, radically generative.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being presents such moments in all their nuance and psychological complexity. In each, there is the opportunity and nightmare of life’s ‘lightness’ — capable of remaking the brief, imperilled world. However, the film should remind us that it is possible to live without fear, a comfort wrapped up in the patterns of eternal recurrence. There’s nothing ‘revolutionary’ about revolution. The ancient Greeks knew it, and set it out in their drama: the ascendant king will kill the former powers, and be terrorised by the conflict of that deposition. And yet, such is human nature, in its most essential core: it drives the work and progress of our world, generation after generation. I can only have silence to be heard through the fading of another voice that would speak. The existence of the prior voice (tradition, parent, or institution) is unbearably light — and so is mine. Our permanence can never be assured, and yet, this price — for the pleasure of being — seems fair, at least, to me, in this eternal moment.
I love the novel and the movie, and, this review.
While the movie is erotically charged, that is not it’s appeal to me (okay, a little bit, sure), but rather the deep exploration of the male psyche in the figure of Tomas and his attempts to understand life’s pleasures, obligations and relationships. I’m interested in the reactions of my wife and my female friends to the figures of Sabina and Tereza and which one appeals to them and why.
Thanks Ed. I too found Tomas a fascinating character, and I could have said much more about his personality. He’s really, to my mind, the incomprehensible ‘ideal’ that the film holds up, though. That probably is just indicative of my personal worldview, however. As you say, I’m sure many people would identify with Teresa as having something essential that Tomas lacks.
And yet, I get the impression that he feels no lack… and that’s his victory.
What a beautiful post Andy. I started watching this film once and must have not been in a place to sit through it. I ended up turning it off. I am now curious to go back and watch it through, to see why that might have happened. I like doing that recently, to revisit things I have already thought I figured out, just to see if they are different to me.
For example, I listened to Neutral Milk Hotel’s album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea several years ago and couldn’t “get it”. Until a month ago when I listened to it and heard how beautiful and moving it is. I have had the same experience with some ideas I used to have, such as “being nice is always most important” or the darker thought that “I don’t matter”. I have been (finally?) moving into a more complex place, where I can see that I matter and I speak powerfully instead of nicely if it comes down to choosing. Perhaps this is an overshare, but films and this column really speak to me.
I’ll check out Neutral Milk Hotel’s album… I hadn’t heard of that!
I remember Helen watching ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ a few years ago, and I watched part of it with her, but only recently felt the desire to watch the whole thing again. I really believe that books and films speak to us at the times we need them… Perhaps this is the perfect time for you and Kaufman’s creation! :)
Thanks for the review. I hate to be one of those annoying people who always say, “the book was so much better” but in this case, I can’t resist. I enjoyed the movie, but the book was life changing!
“This is what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.”
I’ve heard that Kundera hated the film – and swore afterwards that he wouldn’t allow any more adaptations of his work. I haven’t read the book, but I’d really like to. What is it about the book that you think succeeds so well?
As a film, I felt that this movie worked to the strengths of its medium. It’s a beautiful thing, and it works the visual sense using a range of symbols and devices that couldn’t work in a book. The scene with Sabine and Tereza in Sabine’s flat is a great example, I think: so much going on there. It’s just a very different kind of experience, of course – the response to a film is bound to be able to do different things from a written text.
I’ve read the book twice, once when I was about 17 and last year in preparation for my trip to Prague (nerd). For many, many years I said it was my favorite or one of my favorite novels and so it was interesting to revisit. I was struck the second time around by how sexy the book was (a lot of it went over my 17-year-old head), how rooted in Platonic ideals — both embracing and resisting — and also how I felt that Kundera didn’t fully understand his female characters. In the book, I think Tomas has more nuance and there is a stronger sense of what he lacks and what he is yearning for in Teresa (purity, wholeness, the perfection of the natural world). I guess the thing that struck me the most the second time around is how rooted the book is in dualities, dualities that no longer seem quite right to me, even if I still found it moving in places and beautifully written.
The film is a thing of beauty and I’m always happy to see Daniel Day Lewis, Juliette Binoche (luminous as ever) and Lena Olin. Interestingly, I’m not sure that Tomas is the ideal until he becomes the reonciliation between freedom (embodied by Sabine) and love/responsibility (embodied by Teresa).
Seven or eight years ago I wrote a blog post for Sunstone Blog called “The Unbearable Lightness of Brodie,” wherein I recalled an experience during my mission to Taiwan where I read parts of Fawn Brodie’s “No Man Knows My History” and watched “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” for the first time on the exact same day. The year was 1989 and I went into both totally blind.
In the morning we were “tracting” at a local university in Nankang and ended up in the library. On a whim I looked up “Joseph Smith” in the card catalogue and a few minutes later found myself sitting on the floor in the stacks engrossed in Brodie’s controversial biography. I remember feeling simultaneously scared and excited by what I was reading, unable to put it down, but not wanting to turn another page.
Later that afternoon we walked past a building on campus that was hosting a free screening of an American movie I’d never heard of. We were invited by several college students milling around outside the building to watch the movie and I thought, “Why not?” A few minutes later Daniel Day Lewis was whispering, “Take off your clothes,” and it was all downhill (uphill?) from there. Loved it.
You could say both Brodie and Being rocked my little world that day.
Since then I’ve read both Brodie and Kundera, in full, and Unbearable, the film, remains an all-time fav.
That’s a brilliant set of lights to have come into conjunction at once, Matt… and what a surprising connection. That’s the kind of thing I love finding – it’s really a three-way connection, with the lived experience, of course. Is there somewhere that we can find your article online? I found a link to the Sunstone blog, but it gave me a 404 when I clicked through. I’d love to read it in full.