"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1988) - Movie Review

Sex and Love. The two combined and disassociated words make the former an entertainment and other the emotional attachment. But there is an unknown boundary separating those two. Riding along in the path of having actively involved in Sex without being falling in love is a practiced art for Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis). Tomas is versatile in performing the two toughest things in life, Brain Surgery and impressing women. While he is the protagonist, there are few other characters which make this story a heavy substance material. This film is adapted from the very famous novel of the same name by Milan Kundera.

In 1968, Tomas lives in Prague and his womanizing skills are depicted without much of dialogues. He talks and the music plays. That’s the end of it when women laugh and fall all over him. His perfect match on the opposite sex is Sabina (Lena Olin). They are friends and they know exactly what they are doing. Tomas meets Tereza (Juliette Binoche) in a small town when he visits for an operation. We expect him to be rejected and then he madly falls in love, but it does not happen. Tereza is lonely and does not have the right kind of people to talk with her. The attraction is instantaneous for her. They talk few words and Tomas realizing that he cannot stay over leaves. And in a few days, he sees her in his door step. They instantly react and quite surprising to see the calm and naïve Tereza jump in jubilation on attaining what she wanted. He lets her stay in until she finds herself a job. And they do not show how long Tereza stays there but with the way of behaviour of the characters it is assumed that she is there for a while. This puts Tomas in the position of falling for her. They get married. And then the troops of Russia get in and occupy the country. Sabina leaves to Geneva. She meets a married professor Franz (Derek de Lint). She finds herself falling for this man. These two characters of same anatomical view towards making love and their treatment of it are shown in the rest.

Apart from the various views towards the concept of sex and its association to emotion, this movie is also about the feeling of belonging nowhere. Feeling of being in a place and the consequences of disobeying the rules imposed by unknown authorities. The small nuances of irritation wherein freedom is getting stamped upon. It is also the depiction of conscience and the other side of it. I did not see the invasion by Russia really associated with the story in hand philosophically. The idea I thought was a situation wherein the relationship is further tested and maybe in a new location they discover a common point of complete agreement. But the invasion in itself is a scenario of co-existence and the reason upon living as a whole. It invokes the question of why do we attach so much weight to the expansion of land? What is this threat to each other in the same species of living? How much of an attachment can one associate to a place? I can still say that my place of heaven would be to stay in my native, Madurai in Tamil Nadu, India. But it has become a place of visit. There is still a lot of attachment towards it but the city itself changes in many ways. This of course in turn changes the point of view towards living there and visiting it. Tereza feels the same with Prague. She is attached and torn apart to see the same place go in shams.

If only the idea of Tomas is in every one’s mind, then we can all be having orgies every moment and forget the concept of loving one another. Tomas is the dream guy for every one but it stops there. He is a dream, but he is pretty clear on what he is doing and how much emotion he attaches to it. It is none. Like when Tereza confronts him says that how Tomas has explained himself that it is an “entertainment”. An entertainment which is watching a football for him is what she says. But can you totally eliminate the factor of love and have sex? Can you do it for a sufficiently long time which in fact becomes an addiction? Tomas is addicted too. He knows that and his instincts of acting on genitals are higher than the mastery of his own skill, “study of brain”. It is a sad irony. Sabina who has the same kind of distinction towards sex does fall in love. But for some reason does not identify her to be fit enough for Franz. She knows that the only person who can understand her way of life is Tomas. And when she realizes on where he stands, she leaves, which is what she always does. It is the avoidance of the complication. Or rather she is not willing to pay the price of having a loving life. She thinks of the results of emotional disappointments and the regrets.

And when these two strange characters beat them up to confusion, Tereza is the sweet naïve girl who gets caught in between them. Knowing Tomas and his way of life, she cannot see through that system of thinking. She pushes herself to the limits and yet she stands where she was. Franz is the other character who just cannot deal with the conscience of going over his wife. He clears it off but stands alone. He does not know that he dealt with a world of different understanding in a character, Sabina.

One thing I noticed in the movie is how characters react and observe. They send these signals which mean something but they are the only ones who decode it. We are not sure what exactly their actions are or what to take of the already made ones. But this ambiguity creates a curious sense of pleasure which is beautiful in an unknown way of weirdness. For example the scene in which Tereza takes nude pictures of Sabina. Her way of seeing her body is unknown. Whether she is attracted to her or does she is not able to hide the sense of jealousy in which her husband treats that? Or is it her strange dreams coming true in front of her eyes? And when Sabina takes picture of Tereza, it is the same signals from her. This encounter is encrypted in a language which totally means nothing and everything. Juliette Binoche and Sabina bring in their naivety and the emotional dilemmas required for that sequence. Danielle Day-Lewis has the right sharp eyes with that devilish yet erotic look the women crave for. He is rugged but a smooth operator when it comes to handling the opposite sex. He sculptures this character with immaculate adaptation.

The movie is 171 minutes long. I have not read the book but I am sure the details in this movie would have definitely been lost due to the constraints of time and other factors. It is said that Kundera feels that his novels are not suitable for movies. He believes that lot of details and qualities will be lost. I might read the book to see that, but Phillip Kaufman and his team provides a movie of all classic qualities and depth even if it had lost some of those details and qualities.