The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I close the book on Jean-Paul Carriere with his co-authorship (with director Philip Kaufman) of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an adaptation of the novel by Milan Kundera. It was a very classy production that didn't do much business in the U.S., but was a smash in Europe. Producer Saul Zaentz thought this might have been because no one in America had been invaded and occupied.

The movie is a love story set against in Prague in 1968, when the Russian tanks rolled in and Prague Spring came to an end. But the love story is paramount, and involves three people: Tomas, a hedonistic doctor (Daniel Day-Lewis); Sabina, an artist "who understands him best" (Lena Olin), and Tereza (Juliette Binoche), the mousy girl from the country who Tomas, almost despite himself, marries.

The film was released in 1988, but it seems longer ago, because though this film is based on a novel by a European and has a largely European cast, it is by all definition a Hollywood film. That, plus it is extremely erotic, and uses its eroticism to not only supplement its story, but as its foundation. Mostly this is the characterization of Sabina. She favors lovemaking while wearing a bowler hat and with the use of mirrors, and her scenes with Day-Lewis still manage to pack a wallop. Another scene charged with eroticism is when Olin and Binoche use each other as naked models. Criticism that Olin and Binoche are playing the idealized sides of the female coin--one a seductress, the other a virginal companion, is fair, I think. This is a man's film.

At the time I remember this was thought of as a sexy movie, but also a movie of ideas--the title itself refers to Day-Lewis's thinking of life as light, while Binoche thinks of it has heavy. But it wasn't considered pornographic or any such thing. It was the tail end of an era, that got its start in the '60s and then flowered fully in the '70s, when Hollywood films used nudity and sexuality as part of the palette.

Of course, there is still plenty of eroticism in films--Nymphomaniac and Blue Is the Warmest Color are two recent examples--but they aren't American. Except for a few major actresses, nudity seems to be verboten, as if it's somehow scandalous. I don't think any actress trained in the theater would mind nudity. And this goes for men, too (Day-Lewis does not show his manhood in this film).

Anyway, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a good film, which crosses between the love triangle (although Olin and Day-Lewis are never a romantic couple, and don't want it that way) and the political situation. I think a great moment is when Day-Lewis and Binoche are having a fight about his many infidelities and she runs out of the apartment and they find the Russian tanks moving in, which kind of makes any domestic squabble seem irrelevant.

Also, Binoche's character is tied to the Czech identity. The couple escape and he is thriving in Geneva, but she writes him a note, telling him she is weak, so she is going back to the country of weaklings. He follows her, which means his career is at an end, because he refuses to bow down to the Communists and retract an article he wrote.

The best thing Kaufman does in this movie, along with his cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, is use the faces he his given. There are three great faces in this film, starting with Day-Lewis, who has a wolfish look. Consider the scene where he first spies Binoche in a spa swimming pool, and he follows her, his predator eyes under heavy brows, as she makes her way to the bar that she tends, until she glimpses him. Her face, so dewy and puppy-like (a dog plays a great part in the film), open and innocent, which makes it all the more crushing when she's betrayed. And Olin's, round and inviting, even more so when her head is topped with the hat.

The film loses a lot of air when the pair move to a farm and live a rustic, simple lifestyle. This may be because Olin has left the picture, and it turns out that she is really the fulcrum it rests on. Still, this is an admirable film, if not a particularly exciting one (intellectually, I mean).