Product: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2006)
Rating: 1.0
An American non-European movie
After the problems with the Hrabal text in I served the King of England (see my review), Kundera suffers a similar fate. Lets start with quoting the beginning of the Wikipedia review, which sets the scene as follows: "The Unbearable Light-ness of Being is a 1988 American film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Milan Kundera, published in 1984. Director Philip Kaufman and screenplay writer Jean-Claude Carrière show Czechoslovak artistic and intellectual life during the Prague Spring of the Communist period, before the Soviet and Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, and detail the moral-political effects and personal consequences upon a bohemian ménage à trois: a medical doctor and his two women."This is definitely not the Kundera of his many books, and Jean-Claude Carrière, else an excellent script writer with/for eg Buñuel's last six films or so, must have gotten too much under Kaufman's thumb or not have given a damn once he saw where things were going, but must certainly have been paid well. What we more generally have is a money no problem fashion product by a fashion director with international staff. The Czechoslovak atmosphere of 1968 caught by a film-crazy, unrealistically brave youngster (some would call her dumb and stupid), and while most locations would be authentic, the film has nothing Czech about it. It could have been anywhere, mostly New York, the revolt probably in Chile.I have not found any review of the film by Kundera himself, but knowing his work, I would expect that his comments were not kind. After a positive (but rather shallow and uneducated, very American) first review in the Criterion Collection by Michael Sragow (1/11/1999), twelve years down the line, Mark Lova (31/1/2011), in a very clear analysis, sums up the arguments "It's a good question: Why care what Kundera says? I did assume that some people would care. I think if you want to do more than be a consumer of art, if you think that movies and books are not just things you use once and then throw away, you should care too. Obviously, you might like the book, and not care about the film, or you might like the film, not the book. (etc.) However, if you care about the book, you might at least wonder what Kundera was complaining about."Where does that leave me? As I have expressed elsewhere at some stage, I do not like falsifications, and Kaufman's film to me clearly falls into that category. If you already refer to the author and title of the original book, you should show more respect - or is it simply skill (as opposed to money)?62-12 February 2012