The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Reviewed by Davis Rivera

In his 1988 film “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” writer/director Philip Kaufman has succeeded in taking Czech writer Milan Kundera’s terrific 1982 novel and transforming it into a three hour long ode to the source material that is, in almost every way, superior to the original work. There have been numerous attempts at adapting a complex work of philosophical fiction into something suitable for the cinema and the reasons for their successes and failures vary almost as greatly as the techniques used in desperate hope of making the medium change seem comprehensible. In order to understand just how well Kaufman has achieved this feat, one must first look at a few examples of directors, before, during, and after Kaufman’s time, who have tried their hand at improving or matching a book’s power and the eventual outcome. In many cases, the outcome is the most important part (as we will learn in paragraph three), but in order to get there, we must first take the time to learn and appreciate what an arduous task adaptation is.

To begin, perhaps the most unfortunate (and also the most frequent) case of film adaptation is that of a remarkable director of fine talent taking a novel of poor taste and for some unanswerable reason (maybe the translation they read was tampered with or they were getting their revenge on a studio executive) deciding that it’s the right time in their career to take on an unorthodox project. The film that immediately comes to mind in this case is François Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s awful science fiction novel “Fahrenheit 451.” Many of the members of the French New Wave are famously known to have had a terrific sense of humor, but when seeing this film, it is obvious that Truffaut was completely serious in presenting the post-apocalyptic story of Guy Montag and, because he decided against making a send-up of the novel, it remains the one film in his career that is most often left out of retrospectives devoted to him and rightfully omitted when attaching his name to a posthumous release of something he was associated with. Regardless of this poor career move, the film still manages to be better than the novel and, if one has the patience, can be seen in a different light once the aftertaste of the choice is gone. If Cahiers du cinéma can choose “The Nutty Professor” over “8 ½”, the cinephiles of France cannot be regarded as experts in taste and can thus receive a pass.

One of the more unusual outcomes in the case of a film being better than the philosophical novel it was based upon is Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ decent novel “A Clockwork Orange.” Kubrick was a master when it came to adapting books to fit the screen and could easily have this entire essay devoted to him, but as Kaufman’s complete renovation of Kundera’s work remains the quintessential standard for divine mastery of novel adaptation, I will relegate him to two simple paragraphs. The more obvious choice for Kubrick greatly improving on a book is his adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s instruction manual-like science fiction novel, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but, since this essay is on the adaptation of philosophical novels, “A Clockwork Orange” is perfectly adaptable. When he made “A Clockwork Orange,” Kubrick had only just recently finished his adaptation of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” yet the indubitable fatigue he must have felt after taking on such an enormously ambitious project is not at all apparent when seeing the film. It is, in fact, extraordinary that he was capable of creating such a film, bursting with life and innovation, amongst the commotion that was the cinematic world in 1971. If one looks back at the important critic’s reaction to the film at the time, to call it lukewarm would be to flatter it. And putting a flash-in-the-pan director like Peter Bogdanovich’s debut “The Last Picture Show,” above it in many of the year-end lists was adding insult to injury. This, to me, seems to be pure snobbery on the behalf of the critics, very similar to the way most auteurs are treated as greedy narcissists today.

A director improves upon two books in two films in a row, comes dangerously close to improving on three previous books he adapted (“Paths of Glory”, “The Killing”, “Dr. Strangelove”), and makes as good a film as can be made of a modern literary classic (“Lolita”), so he cannot be allowed the critical recognition he deserves? It is to the credit of our modern critics that this narrow-mindedness has greatly decreased in recent years, the treatment of Philip Kaufman being my main example, who wrote and directed the focus of this essay, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and also, wrote and directed a first-rate, underappreciated adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s sprawling epic “The Right Stuff.” Kubrick has also finally been granted the title of cinematic master he deserves and “A Clockwork Orange” has become something of a worldwide phenomenon, even appearing on many “Greatest Films of All Time” lists. This kind of recognition, in my opinion, it does not deserve and would not have were it not for the film’s timeless ideological themes, the fact that it was banned in many countries, and its omniscient presence in modern popular culture, from album covers by The Ramones to episodes of “The Simpsons” to films by the Coen Brothers, who have also recently established themselves as competent in adapting novels.

To spare the reader an analysis of Orson Welles’ adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial” or Charles Sturridge’s massacre of Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” and because I believe that the previous cases are enough to give the reader an adequate amount of knowledge in understanding the plight of a director adapting a philosophical novel for the screen, I will end by explaining, in depth, why I believe Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” carries Kundera’s carefully woven tale and transforms it completely. Kaufman doesn’t exploit the book the way Peter Weir did with Paul Theroux’s “The Mosquito Coast,” he understands that Kundera is bringing philosophy within grasp of a modern reader. He is trying to entertain, yes, but also instruct the reader in his ideas. With this in mind, Kaufman obviously understood the problems he faced in making a screen adaptation of a novel whose central character is really an invisible, garrulous “I,” representing the novelist crafting the story. This “I” of Kundera’s book doesn’t participate in the story of Tomas, Tereza, Sabina, and the others. He looks down on them from a literary “beyond” entering their minds when it is suitable to him and departs, a gentle thief in the night. With a novel like “A Clockwork Orange” or “No Country for Old Men,” the work is basically done for you. There is no pressure in adapting the text into something suitable for today’s public that will also contain a perfectly calculated amount of intellectualism to gratify the critics’ thirst. This is not available to Kaufman at all. In the 350 pages of his book, Kundera provokes responses constantly that give point to humdrum misadventures set in historic times. These are so indescribably sad that the comic method seems the only civilized alternative to what would otherwise turn into what is described as kitsch, something sentimental and false. Not necessarily the obstacles faced by the writers in charge of adapting “Tuesdays with Morrie.”

Kaufman, aside from having every actor in the film speak English with a Czech accent, has avoided every misstep he could have made in the process of bringing the atmosphere of 1968 during the thaw known as the “Prague Spring” to life. Not only does he do this, but he also successfully rids the film of the “I” found in the novel. Whenever possible, Kaufman has managed to save bits and pieces of the “voice” of the novel’s observations by reinserting them into the screenplay as dialogue spoken by the characters, frequently and without a hint of awkwardness. Kaufman’s combination of, on the surface, an attempt to summarize the superficial events of Milan Kundera’s introspective, philosophical novel with fidelity and an accumulating emotional heaviness, gradually building itself up to an immense length is notably ambitious and avoids kitsch completely. In three hours, it is possible to read the entire book, something Kaufman surely knew before embarking on this adventure in adaptation. This adds a certain amount of artistic rivalry to the already overloaded palette Kaufman had before beginning this film. That he was able to best Czechoslovakia’s greatest living writer by using his own material is enough to forgive “Rising Sun,” “Twisted,” and even “Quills.”