A few weeks ago I decided to drive from San Diego to Michigan because my cat had died and I was depressed. On the road I listened to several books on CD, one of which was "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." The book intrigued me, partly because near the end, like me, Tomas and Tereza had to deal with a dying pet, but also because it dealt with big themes like love, sex and loyalty in a very unusual way. Along the way, almost incidentally, it shows you what life and politics were like in Czechoslovakia's "spring," before and after the Soviets moved forcibly back in the tanks.
So when I got back to San Diego one of the first things I did was rent the DVD of the movie. And I wasn't disappointed. First off, I think the movie is as faithful to a book as a movie could or should be, remembering that we're dealing with two different types of media. In the commentary on the CD, for example, the screenwriter explains they decided to leave out scenes with Tereza's mother because they realized that Juliette Binoche was communicating that part of the story merely by the way she (brilliantly) portrayed the character of Tereza.
Kundera's themes of lightness, heaviness, and repetition are very deep; I don't pretend to understand them completely. For me, it's enough that they intrigue, and the movie does them justice.
The acting of all the principals is astounding. I never had seen Lena Olin before, and I appreciated Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day Lewis more than ever.
And as much as I liked listening to the CD of the book, it did not make me cry at the end.
But the movie did.
So when I got back to San Diego one of the first things I did was rent the DVD of the movie. And I wasn't disappointed. First off, I think the movie is as faithful to a book as a movie could or should be, remembering that we're dealing with two different types of media. In the commentary on the CD, for example, the screenwriter explains they decided to leave out scenes with Tereza's mother because they realized that Juliette Binoche was communicating that part of the story merely by the way she (brilliantly) portrayed the character of Tereza.
Kundera's themes of lightness, heaviness, and repetition are very deep; I don't pretend to understand them completely. For me, it's enough that they intrigue, and the movie does them justice.
The acting of all the principals is astounding. I never had seen Lena Olin before, and I appreciated Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day Lewis more than ever.
And as much as I liked listening to the CD of the book, it did not make me cry at the end.
But the movie did.