1968, of course, was a year where it seemed like the world was on fire. After the Tet Offensive that happened during the Vietnam War, while the North Vietnamese lost the battle, the battle itself convinced many in the U.S. the war could not be won, and the protests against the war increased significantly, not only in the U.S. (culminating in the notorious protests at the Chicago Democratic Convention), but around the world; the May riots in Paris that year being one of the more prominent examples. It’s important to remember, however, the protests that were happening that year weren’t entirely about the war, or anti-U.S. or anti-Western sentiment. 1968 was also the year of the “Prague Spring”, where, in Czechoslovakia, people were rebelling against the strictures of Soviet rule, and trying to reform the government to allow more freedom of speech, press, and travel. Unfortunately, the Soviet government did not take this lying down, and in August of that year, they invaded the country and restored the totalitarian government. It’s against that backdrop Philip Kaufman’s great film The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which he and Jean-Claude Carriere adapted from the novel by Milan Kundera, takes place.
The film concerns Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), a surgeon in 1968 Prague, and an inveterate womanizer (his typical come-on line is, “Take off your clothes”). Though he sleeps around with a number of women, the one he always returns to is Sabina (Lena Olin), an artist. One day, while traveling to a small village, he meets Tereza (Juliette Binoche), a waitress at a bar. They soon fall in love and get married, and Tomas even encourages Tereza’s interest in photography. However, Tereza can’t stand the fact Tomas continues to sleep with other women. As if that wasn’t enough, when things in Czechoslovakia seem to be changing for the better, the Soviet Union sends troops and tanks in. Sabina, Tereza, and Tomas all flee to Geneva, where Sabina takes up with Franz (Derek de Lint, who played the collaborator in Soldier of Orange), a professor whom she likes, but doesn’t want to get emotionally involved with (among other things, as she puts it, “He doesn’t like my hat”). Tereza tries to sell the photographs she took of the invasion, but the magazine editors in Geneva consider the invasion old news, and suggest she take fashion pictures. Tereza tries to do so – she even visits Sabina, in a scene I’ll talk more about below – but finds herself unable to function in Geneva. She ends up talking Tomas in returning to Prague, even though the repressive government has been restored. Not only that, but Tomas cannot get a job as a surgeon anymore because he refuses to renounce a satirical article he wrote before the invasion criticizing the government (he gets a job as a window washer instead), and though Sabina has gone to America, he continues his womanizing, which continues to drive Tereza to despair, even though she has her own extramarital affair with an engineer (Stellan Skarsgard) she meets one night while at her old waitress job.
In his previous movie, The Right Stuff, Kaufman edited his actors into historical footage when Alan Shepherd was greeted by President Kennedy after his flight into space. He does the same thing with the invasion footage, as we see Tereza taking pictures of what’s happening, and he does it even more seamlessly. Since Czechoslovakia was still under Soviet control at the time, of course, this archival footage was the only part of the movie actually shot in Prague (Lyon, France doubled for Prague for the most part), but because of how well Kaufman and the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist shoot the rest of the movie, it doesn’t feel out of place. Other than the revolution, the sexual escapades depicted here were the main draw of the movie, yet Kaufman and Nykvist don’t shoot them for easy titillation. The best example of that comes in that scene where Tereza visits Sabina to photograph her. There’s definitely an eroticism about the scene, especially when Sabina decides to turn the tables and photograph Tereza (and even uses Tomas’ come-on line, “Take off your clothes”), but it feels genuine rather than cheap or exploitative. The movie packs a lot into its nearly three hour running time, yet it never feels rushed, as Kaufman is able to keep a light tone to the whole thing, even with all of the events happening.
In Kundera’s novel, he tells the story in a non-linear fashion, and the characters are as much symbols as they are flesh and blood. The characters are still symbols in the movie, but the actors make them come alive. In later years, Day-Lewis would disparage his own work here, and I don’t really understand why, as he’s never seemed more relaxed on screen, or funnier (the closest he came was in the title role in Steven Spielberg’s LINCOLN). Even when he’s sticking to his principles in not renouncing that article, Day-Lewis acts it in an offhand way, and he has marvelous chemistry with his co-stars. Binoche was early in her career (her most notable movies before this were Jean-Luc Godard’s HAIL MARY and Leos Carax’s MAUVAIS SANG), and this was her first role in English, but she’s up to the challenge. It seems Tereza represents the “darkness” that’s opposed to the light, which is not only a conceit, but a reactionary one, but Binoche makes her into a full-blooded character instead, as a woman who wants to live where she’s comfortable, and just doesn’t understand why men cheat; it’s when she and Tomas are alone in the country late in the movie, with their dog and other friends, that she only truly feels happy. Sabina is arguably the biggest conceit of all – the male fantasy of the friend with benefits – but Olin (most known at the time for appearing in Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY & ALEXANDER and AFTER THE REHEARSAL) likewise makes her a believable character of flesh and blood. Actors often say their wardrobe helps them define the character they play, and I don’t know if that’s how Olin felt about the bowler hat Sabina wears, but she makes it an integral part of the character. There’s also good work from de Lint, Skarsgard, Donald Moffat (as another surgeon), and Bergman stalwart Erland Josephson (as a janitor). Kaufman seems to have lost his way after this (his only other good film that I’ve seen is the 2000 period drama QUILLS), but THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING stands as a great movie about sex, politics, and freedom.
