In case you missed its’ most recent iteration, there is a recurring discourse in the online film community lately about the ethics and purpose of sex scenes in movies -mostly coming from those especially younger and otherwise progressive voices who are discomforted by them and would rather they didn’t exist (ignoring of course that sexuality of any sort is all but completely absent from modern Hollywood filmmaking). It’s dumb and weird and unsettlingly puritanical, but it has been on my mind lately -which may be why I chose this movie to talk about this month. A movie that features sex scenes and frank sexuality, and may even be in conversation with this discourse. It is not intentionally out of spite.
It may also be because The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent reminded me of this movie and its’ extremely poetic title. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a 1988 film directed by Philip Kaufman based on Milan Kundera’s book about the lives of three bohemians in Czechoslovakia during the 1968 Prague Spring and subsequent Soviet invasion. It is the movie credited with launching the international careers of both Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche, it was nominated for three Academy Awards, and it is known for both its’ sharply drawn, epic political context and its’ explicit sexuality. The provocative title is apparently Nietzschean in nature, referring to the pressures of an intellectually and sexually liberated, carefree lifestyle.
The philosophical notions suggested therein aren’t explored too ardently by the movie, but the tenets are illustrated rather cleanly –especially in the whole arc of Tereza (Binoche), who goes from craving that kind of stimulation to feeling burdened by her need to belong to its’ mores, to achieving a kind of peace through abandonment of its’ practices. More keenly than anyone else, she feels that unbearable lightness of being through most of her integration into bohemian life. She is the small-town waitress who meets the charming brain surgeon Tomas (Day-Lewis) and follows him back to Prague to begin an affair and escape her cloistered mundanity. But of course in that choice she has to put up with his constant womanizing, particularly his relationship with an artist Sabina (Lena Olin) -against whom she is forced to compare herself and against the free-spiritedness of the Prague Spring she is pushed to challenge her boundaries. While not fundamentally conservative, the story is a more measured and critical take on such movements of revolution -especially in the context of what this very brief moment in time for Czechoslovakia was succeeded by: twenty years of suppressive Soviet occupation. In the text, there’s a flippant casualness to the priorities of Tomas and Sabina and Tereza’s lives –lives that revolve around either politics or sex. But Kaufman gives it some romance too, perhaps understanding that that brief window of liberalization, of renewed cultural ecstasy was a tiny golden age for free expression that should be cherished –he was of the hippie generation after all.
And so there are scenes that hone in on the joys and pleasures of these young people: the freewheeling excitement of Tomas and Tereza’s first sexual encounter, in which his tempered seduction is interrupted by her jumping him and the two careening around the apartment in this manner before finding the bed. Or of course their wedding, which is beset by fits of giggles and an adorable little piglet in a black tie running around, much to the consternation of the priest. Tereza and Tomas have great sexual chemistry; it is a lustful, at times tender romance. Kaufman questions the order of values that dominate these peoples’ lives, but not that they are indeed values. Though they could do with having a little more on their minds (we see almost nothing of Sabina’s profession), the real issue is in the how and not the what. There is a critical power imbalance and a lack of understanding to Tomas’ relationship with Tereza that he chooses to be ignorant to. It’s not polyamory itself that is wrong, but Tereza’s lack of consent towards it. It is communication that is the issue between them, not sex.
Bluntly, I think it comes down to Tomas being an idiot horndog, who seems to think if he stays committed maritally and emotionally to Tereza that it is okay if he pursues other women sexually. The movie engages him in sympathy and Day-Lewis is such a great actor that one can read his motives plainly –why these libertine acts are so important for him intellectually and politically; but it is Tereza whose voice and whose feelings are permitted more weight and she makes clear in multiple confrontations that his gallivanting makes her uncomfortable. It buffets her insecurities, her sense of inadequateness –best illustrated in a scene in which while doing swim exercises she imagines seeing all the other women nude with Tomas admiring their bodies. In spite of this, she remains inexorably attracted to Tomas and what he represents. She is a sexual person, and the most fascinating feature of the movies’ sexual politics is how it explores and lends legitimacy to Tereza’s mildly repressed desire to be like Tomas and Sabina –the latter of whom she is especially drawn towards despite her relationship with Tomas. Indeed, Tomas is the least interesting of this triad as even Sabina’s story and her personal choices are afforded more pathos.
And just as much erotic tension is there between her and Tereza, a palpable undercurrent of Sapphic curiosity to most of their interactions. It’s clear Tereza idolizes Sabina in some way –she is in the eyes of Tereza and the movie itself, the sexual ideal. Tereza perhaps wants to be what Sabina is to Tomas: sultry, seductive, mysterious; but in her timid admiration are the hints of genuine desire too. Sabina certainly has equal inclinations, exemplified most openly in a sequence in which, while all are in Switzerland, she agrees to pose nude for the photographer Tereza. Following up on Tereza’s preoccupation with sexuality in art, to which she feigns apathy, it forces her to objectify Sabina through her camera. It’s a beautifully paced sequence as Tereza becomes gradually more flustered by both Sabina herself and the power she displays over her own body and sexual agency –eventually the tides turning as Sabina compels Tereza to model for her. It’s lovely to see Tereza’s barriers come down, and as she poses now happily for Sabina one can’t help but sense a sought after mutual catharsis between these women that has eluded Tereza’s marriage with Tomas.
Sabina it seems however may not have been great for Tereza either, as she has the opposite inhibitions: as threatened by commitment, monogamy, routine as Tereza is by the alternatives. This makes her either the perfect mate for Tomas or his best enabler -and they do have notably passionate lovemaking scenes, their first of the movie arranged so that they can face themselves in a mirror. And yet, both fight against their narcissism -Sabina in particular seems to want on some level a relationship more contained and simple. She pursues one in Geneva with a Dutch professor, who decides to leave his family for her -but it is too much for her to take, she won’t let herself be tied down. She more than anyone strives to live in the Prague Spring long after it has ended -and it’s quietly tragic.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being really shows that tragedy, one of the few works of art in international recognition to deal with what happened in Czechoslovakia when the Iron Curtain dropped over it. The political landscape it illustrates of the Prague Spring is really interesting, as liberal in thought and feeling as 1960s France, the openness of radical viewpoints from Tomas and his group of friends is played with excitement. As cynical as some of the themes may be, that character of the period draws little criticism from either Kundera’s story or Kaufman’s execution of it. But then the Soviets arrive all of sudden and the way that Kaufman depicts that is glorious. It literally interrupts an argument between Tomas and Tereza, as they notice tanks coming down the street, and chaos soon unfolds. The movies’ textures fade in and out of colour, though even in colour it is depleted, shot with documentary-like details. This fits as Kaufman intercuts real footage of the invasion, people scattering about trying to fend off the troops and munitions -Tomas and Tereza are there, and while they may not be spliced into the real footage exactly Forrest Gump style, its’ edited and filmed so consistently that you wouldn’t be able to tell. And it captures exactly the fear and gravity of a world changing overnight. Tereza was about to leave Tomas -she can’t now. It is the films’ centrepiece tonally and thematically -nothing is the same for any of the protagonists afterwards. They attempt to chase what was lost in Switzerland, but it doesn’t last. Tereza returns home and Tomas follows her. And in that context their lives are even more shaken. Tomas is blacklisted for anti-Soviet writing he had done prior to the invasion, and refuses to repudiate it. Tereza in her continued efforts to expand her sexual comfort and get back at Tomas for his infidelities, sleeps with an engineer played by a young Stellan Skarsgård, but becomes paranoid that he is a secret Soviet agent. All that was bright about their world, both idealistically and literally, is now bleak. And it’s no wonder they only find peace away from the politics, away from the city -settling in the countryside for a humble existence where they come into a freedom from that lightness of being, which even Tomas finds happiness in.
It’s a serene, bittersweet ending that brings about news of their unexpected death to a Sabina still living a vestige of that life they left behind now in the U.S. A rather curious comment is made by this that posits a greater, more mature sensibility of being, away from politics, sexual pervasiveness, and infidelity -but that is temporal only. A tragedy that these characters leave the world only shortly after discovering true satisfaction in it. I can’t speak to Kundera’s intent by this -if it is indeed how his book ends- but Kaufman seems to take a neutral position that doesn’t exalt either fate. In broad terms, the movie appears to suggest the only way to fulfillment in life is in pastoral quietude and the rejection of vice -that those who continue on in it will be listless, unable to be content. But then subjectively, one could view the tragedy of Tomas and Tereza being in this very need to settle, the cutting off of their expression, of Tereza’s chances to explore her sexuality with a supporting partner. And Sabina’s life only seems diminished in the sense of Tomas and Tereza’s absence and the supposed value placed on a down-the-earth monogamous existence. Kaufman leaves room for these interpretations, which must be felt or otherwise the Prague Spring would be in vain -and I don’t think either author of this story means for that conclusion. Ultimately it is the characters rather than their pursuits or the movement they are obliged to represent that matter. It is not in doubt that either made the wrong choice for themselves personally. Tomas needed Tereza to push him to this, both for his safety and to break from his toxic traits. And as for Sabina, she may well have found something with that professor -but breaking up a marriage is a hell of a thing to have on the conscience, and she wasn’t ready. By the end of the movie she is still in some ways lost and confused, but also in control and not necessarily unhappy. Maybe she’ll settle down, maybe she won’t -Kaufman doesn’t pass judgement.
Lena Olin was the only cast member of this film to receive much awards recognition, which is stunning to me. Olin is remarkable, delivering far above her caustic screen time in subtle depth and alluring sexuality alike -her trademark bowler hat makes for one hell of an erotic look! But all three leads are astounding! Day-Lewis is the most subdued, but still fittingly charismatic for how reserved he is -not all too dissimilar to his character from Phantom Thread nearly thirty years later. And Juliette Binoche just reinforces why she’s one of the best actresses of her generation -even at just twenty-three playing to perfection the nuances of this woman at a crossroads of what she wants and wants to be. There are many ways Tereza could have come off as infantile or unlikeable, but Binoche conveys excellently her every impulse. Kaufman wrote the screenplay with Jean-Claude Carrière, and it is very good, one of the films’ only Oscar nominations. His direction though might be more impressive, not only in that invasion sequence, but his great power of mood and pace, the latter especially important to the sexually-charged scenes. Underrated as a New Hollywood director it seems.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being might be too. A sharp, stirring film about sex and politics in a time and place often overlooked for its’ historical significance and dramatic potential. An intriguing movie to look at all these years later, especially in the context I alluded to earlier. Its’ curious morality on sex in tandem with its’ depiction is sure to resonate with our modern discussions on such things, uninformed and in bad faith though they may be. But apart from that, it is an epic, compelling, inquisitive, and by no means unbearable film; rather it is one of the best movies of 1988.
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