Product: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2006)
Rating: 3.0
Just another love story
The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of those occasional attempts by American filmmakers to make a European arthouse movie in English, in this case taking on an `unfilmable' novel and trying to solve the problem of turning inner monologue into a credible narrative. Despite, or perhaps because of Jean-Claude Carriere's presence as co-writer with director Philip Kaufman, this tends to take the form of the odd conversation between shags rather than an attempt to turn ideas into images, leaving a rather conventional narrative about a philandering surgeon who ultimately needs the oppression of the Russian invasion rather than the freedom of the Czech Spring to focus his emotional commitments and principles. Some of this is done well, some of it less well, but at the end of the day it's just a love story, although it deals well with the personal consequences of the political crackdown and the ending is quietly moving. Which, in a way, reflects some kind of emotional triumph - whereas for most of the film we don't really care for the characters, merely go along with them, by the end, like he hero, we have at least attained some genuine level of emotional commitment.Whether that entirely justifies 171-minutes of screen time is debatable, though in its defense the film never feels that long. There are moments that grate, not least the sporadically clumsy integration of the main characters into archive footage of the Russian invasion that draws attention to itself by the crude device of adding scratches only to the new footage. The photography session doesn't quite work either despite an interesting start, not quite pulling off the shift of power and veering off into self-indulgence. The performances are slightly problematic too, especially with the Czechs limited to the smaller supporting roles in an Anglo-French-Swedish-American cast leading to a variety of composite accents (often more Germanic than Slav) and a feeling that the casting directors thought "Yeah, he sounds foreign, he'll do" at times. Daniel Day Lewis fares well as the coldly charismatic and fickle doc but still hadn't shrugged off that well-trained British stage actor feel to his performances; Juliette Binoche is genuinely appealing in one of her more open performances, although it's a bit of a stretch that her character never loses her naiveté; but as the more passionate of his loves Lena Olin is somewhat more problematic, her performance getting less convincing as the film progresses until rediscovering its humanity in her final scene. Of the supporting players, Erland Josephon has one good scene as a former ambassador reduced to being a janitor that underlines the way that even love and sex can be used as weapons of political oppression merely through the introduction of doubt - an idea that becomes strangely more powerful because of the way Kaufman frequently fails to summon up much in the way of eroticism because he generally regards sex as joyfully comic.Annoyingly the film has been split across two discs, although the break isn't quite as abrupt as on some other discs. The DVD boasts a good transfer with an interesting audio commentary and good half hour documentary that illustrates that even if they didn't entirely succeed at least the filmmakers were trying to create something of real substance.