Watch The Unbearable Lightness of Being For Free

Sorry, this movie sucks

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Here is a late 60s period drama set in former Czechoslovakia. It is done in beautiful detail and atmosphere. Lena Olin certainly is the best of the leads during this movie, a quite long 2 hrs and 45 min or so. She fills many scenes with her fabulous eyes and vibrancy. The other leads are also pretty good. With so much runtime, the movie amply explores the characters and their development in the volatile and changing world of communism. It examines love and especially sexuality of characters. Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day Lewis round the competent cast. Directed by Phillip Kaufman very well. Some of the best scenes were in the well-created backdrop sets mimicking the communist state. (spoilers) The tragic ending seems a bit misplaced and almost a footnote, although the movie is taken from a novel so may be called for. I liked it and am glad to have watched 7.5/10

I actually saw the movie with a lot of expectation. The title itself was very catchy at the same time mysterious. But i have never before been this disappointed by a movie. It started out with the story of a young doctor with numerous sexual partners who falls for a meek, typical "good girl" who expects a monogamous relationship. throughout the movie what i searched for is some level of ingenuity, spontaneity or even a beautiful romance. Sorry but i didn't find any. the film itself makes no sense, mainly because there is no naturality at all, especially how he falls in love with the lady. He saw her, next moment they talk for a second, he leaves, reaches home, she shows up that night, they make out and they get married. All this in a span of 2 days or so. this applies to the whole of the movie. To conclude it was a mistake to watch this movie for me.

Although the screenplay is based on the great and world-famous book by Milan Kundera, it was written by others (Jean-Claude Carrière and the director Philip Kaufman) and thus lost its original touch and approach - as was pointed out by Kundera himself who withdrew from the outcome. On the other hand, fragile feelings, ponderings and internal doubts are very difficult to express on the screen - without losing the pace and uniformity of the plot. It is also pity that Prague was not / could not been used, as it is a beautiful city and gives more realism than the French places used. Depicion of the socialist/communist oppression is, however, rather perfunctory, seeming not so serious as it really was in the 1970ies within the Warsaw block when hopes of intellectuals for the so-called human-faced socialism vanished as liberal steps were diminished or repealed.The cast is, of course, brilliant, in particular the bohemian ménage à trois members: Daniel Day-Lewis as Tomas, Juliette Binoche as Tereza and Lena Olin as Sabina - all later multiple Academy Award winners and/or nominees, and from different European countries (the movie itself is still the US one). They and some other fine European actors have provided the movie a real European atmosphere, without a Hollywood studio feeling as sometimes perceived in "older" movies.Nevertheless, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is still a movie high above average, enhancing historical facts as well. But it is hard to say whether is is recommendable to read the book before or after...

It was hard to keep aesthetic distance after reading so much review material before seeing this. I have to agree with those that criticize the length. There is a sense of rambling and lack of meeting of forces that turned me off a little. I thought a little tweaking of this would have made the film get to its point. Nevertheless, I didn't say it isn't a decent film. While I find self-indulgent types like these hard to take, they certainly light up the screen. Here are some of the best actors of our time. There is also a political threat that is nicely intertwined among the rest of the love story. I felt sorrow for the young woman who just wanted to be cared for. She is dealt a nasty hand. But if you know it's a snake, be ready to be bitten, as the old fable tells us. The strongest part of this is the cinematography. Cameras within cameras, sharp, insightful scenes put before us, subtle facial expressions, all this. I've never read the book, but I feel I may need to do so. Perhaps with a more insightful character development only a novel can give, I would enjoy the people more.