The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) – 3/5

Not one of my favorite DDL movies, but still a good watch for the most part

What we have here is „The Unbearable Lightness of Being“ and before I elaborate on the story in here, I would like to talk a bit about the film’s basics first. This is a movie from 1988, so it will have its 35th anniversary soon. I had the chance to watch it on the big screen and I took it and don’t regret it or only regret it a little bit because I had to go twice and watch the first two hours on the first screening and then watched the final hour (or slightly under) on the second screening. But even if the movie does not reach the three-hour mark, it comes extremely close, so this is an incredibly long movie. The director and also one of the writers is American Philip Kaufman. He turned 86 less than a month ago, but still does not seem retired. Or maybe retired as a director, but not retired as a writer as there seem to be projects on his radar still in terms of penning content. He has surely never been the most prolific filmmaker as he only directed 13 films in his directing career that lasted for almost half a century. Admittedly, he wrote a lot more over the years. His writing here resulted in his only Oscar nomination. He shared said nomination with French writer Jean-Claude Carrière, who wrote over 150 screenplays, but sadly died last year, not too long before his 90th birthday. May he rest in peace. He was also a prolific actor, but his Oscar nominations came for writing and his one win even came for a short film. This film here resulted in his final Oscar nomination, but he received a Honorary Oscar more than 25 years later.

The base material here is by Czech writer Milan Kundera, who is already deep into his 90s now, so all the writers here showed some great longevity. I cannot say a lot about Kundera, except that maybe a bit from this film and the central male character could also have had parallels to Kundera’s life himself, even if it is of course not an autobiographical movie. In any case, Kundera is Czech and the majority of the film is set in Czechoslovakia, so he lived through these times himself back then and also the book this film is based on is Kundera’s by far most known work I believe. I did not read the book, so I cannot talk about parallels between the base material and the movie here, but I know there’s people out there who really love the book and for most it is probably one of those cases where the film does not reach the quality of the book. Before I take a look at the cast, let me say that Sven Nykvist was the cinematographer here and he also scored the second Oscar nomination for this movie. He is no longer with us and at that point he had already won two Oscars for cinematography in Ingmar Bergman movies. Speaking of Bergman, Nykvist is not the only one with a connection there. Lena Olin, who was nominated for a Golden Globe and many other awards for her portrayal of the perhaps biggest supporting character here, had her breakthrough as a really young actress with Bergman quite some time before this film was made. The main reason for me to go watch this film here was Daniel Day-Lewis though. Great fan of him, rather his performances in the new millennium, but also he has some films and portrayals before 2000 that I liked. I would not really list this one here as top-notch material from him though. Admittedly, this also may have had to do with how unlikable I found his character, so cannot really blame the actor. I definitely stay a big fan. He was around the age of 30 when he made this and it was probably his big breakthrough as a lead actor you could say. His first Oscar win was only a year away at that point. I still think it is a pity he seems retired now, but who knows, maybe the right screenplay can bring him back one final time.

As for this film here, the female lead is French actress Juliette Binoche. She was around the age of 23 when this was shot, so not as young as she looks maybe, but of course the way her character behaves also adds up to that for the most part. She was also already a relatively established actress in France and had appeared in a handful films in the 1980s, but on an international level this movie here was also her breakthrough and her own Oscar win then happened almost a decade later in another movie with a very strong connection to the novel it is based on. But about that one we will not talk today. This film here surely deserves a great deal of elaboration. The ending was surprisingly tragic. We do not witness the fatal car crash that kills the two, but we find out about it in a letter to Olin’s character which surely takes away all the lightness from us when we see the two main characters in the end in a seemingly happy ending on the street there. You could interpret it in all kinds of different ways. I saw it as a consequence of the loss of innocence too. The two lovebirds are united again and in love with each other, even if they are going through rough times, him especially, but it is all about romance. You could think that he will maybe finally stay faithful to her after he overcame such a long distance and also pretty much sacrificed his career to be with her again, but the reality is that he slept with other women again when he had the chance and the consequence was the loss of innocence from her perspective that she slept with another man too. Of course, he would not accept it at all if he had known. He has a massive ego. Maybe that fact that he had to clean windows now instead of being allowed to work as a doctor also created some anger in him and he blamed her and made her responsible, even if we do not see any aggression from him towards her, but perhaps it could be seen as one explanation why he thinks he has the right to cheat on her again.

Another sad occurrence in the last segment of the movie is of course the death of their dog, the hound that had formed the connection between them since their very early days as a couple. So not a great film for animals again or actually it is because the animal had a long life apparently and was loved dearly by its two owners. The scene in which Binoche’s character talks about her love for the dog and how it is different to the love she has for her man stayed in the mind for me. The man’s name is Tomas by the way. Not a bad name at all. And her name is Tereza. They play Czech characters of course, but accents or language were not a factor in here at all. The film is in English because of Day-Lewis‘ background mostly, but also because Binoche was fluent in it and we should not take that as a given for somebody who is in their early 20s and who has only worked in France until then. So you also should not be mad about her thick French accent that obviously made no sense in terms of her character. Worrying about stuff like this was not a factor back then or at least not with this movie that the characters would have had to learn the Czech language. This was never an option as here we have an American director and thus also a full-on American production. Of course, with somebody else in charge, this could have been a Czech production also with Czech actors for the lead protagonists. Then it would have been a totally different outcome though, maybe one that could have managed to score an Oscar nomination in the foreign language category, perhaps a win even and certainly it would not have been seen by as many people compared to the amount who have seen it until today. How about Milos Forman directing this? That could have gotten interesting with his background. Anyway, this novel is originally from 1984, so the film was made less than five years after the book. Probably production also took quite a while give the running time, so it was not even close to five years.

Let me mention two more aspects I found interesting and that stayed in my mind, although by now it is already maybe ten days since I saw the film’s first two hours. I am talking here about the introduction of Binoche’s character, how she is literally swimming into Tomas‘ life and we see her black bathing suit there. We also see it later on on another occasion. The first meeting between them was interesting too, how she made a connection there between his room number and the time when she would be done with her work. She had fallen for him right away, he would not even have to play hard to get there. It is also cute how clumsy she acts immediately afterwards when he is sitting on what she considers her bench. In a playful manner of course. The second inclusion I would like to mention here is Mephisto, the pig. Now for him there was a happy ending I think. We see him as a small pig and then later on again when he is really big and it was cute to see and be told how he also gets along so well with the dog from the duo. Okay, I am not unbiased here either because I love pigs, not just guinea-pigs, but still I must mention this animal character for sure. On the human side, there are also supporting actors in here that managed long careers and made some nice waves over the years: Erland Josephson died a decade ago, but there we have another Bergman connection. Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski is still active and has also been in more modern Hollywood films and this one here is surely among his most famous movies. And of course the young Stellan Skarsgård is in here too and he plays the architect who managed to get really close to Binoche’s character too, even if it meant nothing to her clearly except that she liked being protected. Compare this sex scene to the one she has with Day-Lewis‘ character when he comes to see her again and they reunite in Prague. Could not have been any more different. If there is anything positive you can say about Tomas, it is how he treats his dog and also that he is a man of principles and he will not sign anything that he does not stand for. He could have done it to save his career, but his perception of the world and the political climate made it impossible for him. That is all then. I give this film a thumbs-up.