Product: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2006)
Rating: 4.0
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - 4.5 stars
Many of us know people (or are those people ourselves) who move through life lightly, never taking too much too seriously. This film explores what happens when people treat each other lightly, when there is an imbalance of attachment between people, when couples' definitions (of love, sex, commitment, etc.) are unequal: Which person is self-centered, selfish even, and which one bears most of the emotional weight? Whose interests does the couple tend to nurture the most, and who's ideas are often left unexplored until they wither away?The film is a period piece that pits the free expression of sex in 1960s Prague against the backdrop of Communist Russia. When the Soviet army invades Prague in 1968, the film truly begins, presenting a parallel love story and war story. This structuring is intentional. You'll have to decide for yourself how the alternating settings of the film work with the changing relationships of the film's protagonists. While I think the movie does well with the period and settings, any extremism (from the left or right) seems to me the antithesis of freedom.The three main characters form a triangle that is often found in film noir, but this triangle is more complicated. The three begin the film under the guises of traditional noir types: Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) is the great leading man and scoundrel; Tereza (Juliette Binoche) is the adorable nurturing woman; and Sabina (Lena Olin) is the insatiable and ever-fleeting femme fatale. Once put in motion, however, these character types begin to wobble, although the triangle remains intact throughout the majority of the film.The nudity and sex scenes in the film are quite explicit and are European in their cinematic representations of the body and of sex. Aside from a few scenes of over-the-top zooming, the cinematography is spectacular, especially in scenes with mirrors. It might be worth noting that the film is nearly three hours long and requires some patience to watch. The characters are developed deeply while the plot moves slowly. The 2006 version of the DVD contains a making-of featurette in which you can learn more about how controversial the film was, and in some ways, still is.