I don't know if anyone popped over to Oso's blog when I posted a rave earlier in the week? I just wandered over there again and happened upon this amazing experiential book/movie review (using a review of a book as bookends to enter and exit larger philosophical/experiential discussions). Thanks Oso!
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Filed under: Book Review Reviews Movie Reviews— oso @ 11:50 am
I’ve been reluctant writing this because I wanted to re-read passages of the novel and re-watch scenes of the movie first, but what the hell, here it goes. I was first attracted to Laura because she was beautiful and because she was reading a book; that’s all it took. Not to say that I fell in love with her because she is beautiful and was reading a book, but those were the first two things to catch my attention. Those are always the first two things to catch my attention. In fact, I think Kundera himself writes about this somewhere - a character in one of his novels feels like he/she (I don’t remember) belongs to some sort of secret society with everyone else that he/she sees reading in public. I’m the same way. Everytime I go to a coffeeshop and see someone reading by themselves - instantly I want to sit down, offer them a cigarette, and talk about the book. About the characters. About how the author presented someone or something, about bias, about what was not brought up. But I rarely do. And when I do, the conversations almost always disappoint. Because truth is, novels (I would say all artwork) are meant to be experienced more than talked about. Which is why I’ve always had strange issues with museums, museum curators, literature departments and professors, art commentaries - just about anyone telling me what I should think or even politely suggesting what I might want to consider about some piece of art.
I came across this Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem the other day:
“Truth is not the secret of a few”
yet
you would maybe think so
the way some
librarians
and cultural ambassadors and
especially museum directors
act
you’d think they had a corner
on it
the way they
walk around shaking
their high heads and
looking as if they never
went to the bath
room or anything
But I wouldn’t blame them
if I were you
They say the Spiritual is best conseived
in abstract terms
and then too
walking around in museums always makes me
want to
“sit down”
I always feel so
constipated
in those
high altitudes
It’s weird. Lit classes were often my favorites in college, but I always had this almost seething anger at the professors and especially TA’s and their methods of teaching us “how to read,” and “what the author is trying to communicate.” My experiences with novels are always so intense, so personal. It’s hard for me to recommend a novel to someone because I would take it personal if they weren’t impressed, or didn’t come away with a new perspective on life, or god forbid, didn’t even finish it. I’ve learned to lie, learned to say “oh that one was alright” with passing non-chalance.
I digress. So there was Laura - she was reading a book (it was an anthology of Oscar Wilde), I fell for her, and now we’re living together. We started talking about The Portrait of Dorian Gray and she asked me what my favorite book was. That’s a tough question, but usually I answer, “Immortality” by Milan Kundera. She said she’s never heard of the guy.
It always amazes me how few people have Milan Kundera, that he has not won the Pullitzer or Nobel prize, hardly any literary prizes at all really.
“But I’d really like to read something of his,” she said with this flirtatious smile of hers where one eye is a little more open than the other. That smile kills me … today just like it did that day. And ever since I had been looking for a Spanish language version of Immortality. I would stop by every bookstore in every town as we traveled through Mexico, but never any luck. Finally, in Mexico City - in a small indie bookstore right off of Coyoacan’s main plaza - was a cheap copy of La Insorportable Levedad de Ser - “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” In the next two weeks she became enthralled and we switched places: now it was her always asking if we could go to a cafe or park to read. We had beautiful conversations about the book while walking arm in arm around plazas in Cuernavaca, Oaxaca, and San Cristobal de las Casas.
I could also see the book affecting her mood. She would become attached to a character, relate to him or her, and then later become disgusted with the character’s decisions. She would finish reading a short passage about Tomas cheating on Teresa and then ask me with angst what I thought about fidelity, if I have ever cheated on her, if I ever would cheat on her, if there was a difference between sex and making love. In short, the novel did everything to her that it did for me: it made her question.
The Unbearable Selection of Blockbuster
There are two video stores that I go to in San Diego. One is Kensington Video where they have every dvd and video you could imagine, where their staff has seen almost everything, where it is only $2.50 for four days. I walk into Kensington Video and within five minutes I have more than 20 dvd’s bundled in my arms and I have my argument already prepared for why we should watch one of these rather than whatever 20 dvd’s Laura has bundled in her arms Unfortunately it is also a twenty minute drive from our house. The other video store is the La Jolla Blockbuster, which is only five minutes from our house. It is filled with bored UCSD students in pajamas about to go back to their 7 story concrete dorms where they will watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the tenth time, feigning interest, wanting to heavily pet the nearest person of the opposite sex. Rather than spending the extra 15 minutes driving to Kensington Video, sometimes we go to Blockbuster and spend an extra 45 minutes in a desperate search for one single movie that we could tolerate.
This is what we were doing a few nights ago when finally … like finally after 40 minutes … I came across Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I had always heard the same thing about the movie: that it at the time of release (1988), it was the sexiest movie since Last Tango in Paris. And there are definitely some sexy scenes, but by today’s standards, it’s “graphic representation of sex” is mild.
Anyone who has read The Unbearable Lightness of Being would affirm that making a filmed version to capture the essence of the novel is a daunting if not impossible task. Though I would still recommend reading the novel first to really understand the symbolism, Kaufman does a good job of translating Kundera’s philisophical meditations into visual representations and character dialogues. For example, Kundera begins his novel talking about Nietzche’s Eternal Return. Which in my opinion is really what the entire novel is trying to demonstrate. Kaufman tries to represent this idea with a simple two minute discussion between Tomas and Sabina.
Tomas has always been a bachelor. He is a successful surgeon, sleeping around with a different woman every night. He also has a sexual agreement with Sabina who is much more than another of his women. She could be considered his “soul-mate” or “kindred-spirit.” Someone who shares the same values as he does, who also sees life as light, and who also has always avoided getting involved in heavy relationships. Tomas has broken that unsaid agreement however. He has allowed himself to fall in love with Teresa who he decides to marry. When Sabina asks him why he would do such a thing, something that goes against the way he has always led his life, he says (something along the lines of:) “Well, how could I know? That’s the thing about life isn’t it Sabina, that there’s no way for us to know what decision is best. In the perfect world I could live my life with Teresa and live my life without her and then compare the two to see which is better. But that’s not how it works. There is no way for me to know.” And this I think sums up Kundera’s take on Nietzche’s Eternal Return - that in life, we can’t hold ourselved accountable for our decisions, because we have no way of knowing which choice would have turned out better.
On last December 8th I passed up a flight to Istanbul where I was going to live and teach English. I couldn’t get a refund, the empty seat went unused. There were a number of reasons I didn’t go. To stay with Laura, to take care of Crystal, to continue my research with Mexico, and probably others that aren’t even consciouss. I have often thought about whether I made the right decision or not. But there is absolutely no way for me to know.
For Tomas this makes life light and carefree, for Teresa, heavy and filled with anxiety.Here is an excerpt from a great review on The Jujube Spotlight:
Based on a novel by Milan Kundera, the movie takes place in Prague, 1968, and centers around a young Czech doctor named Tomas. As played to simmering perfection by Daniel Day-Lewis, Tomas is gorgeous, intelligent, successful, and sexy, the epitome of sophistication and detachment. He has, in fact, made detachment his personal religion. Despite a steady diet of lovers and an ongoing affair with the equally sexy and freedom-loving Sabina (Lena Olin), Tomas masters his admitted fear of women and the uncertainty of life by eschewing any sort of commitment. He approaches his paramours with the same clinical and unemotional goodwill with which he is shown to perform brain surgery, humming contentedly to himself. His connection to the world is “light:” adamantly unattached to anything, he can come and go as he pleases, take or leave what he will, and feel only the trifling amount of guilt or regret his airy relationships demand.
This begins to change, however, when Tomas espies the lovely Tereza (Juliette Binoche) during a business trip to the country. Pursuing her as he does all attractive women, he is put off a bit when he discovers that her willingness to meet his advances stems from a naif’s wish for experience and interaction with someone interesting, rather than a reciprocal desire for casual sex. Leaving her behind untasted, however, does not rid him of the temptation, for she shows up at his apartment in Prague a few days later, desperate for his attention and the new life she thinks he can offer. Thus, Tomas suddenly finds himself with a live-in lover and, before long, a wife — undoubtedly an attachment, although he continues to sleep with Sabina and everyone else he can get his hands on.
Whereas Tomas’ approach to life is light, Tereza’s is “heavy,” as she herself admits. She is very sensitive and unable to resist becoming emotionally attached to other people (and animals). Unlike Tomas’ profession, which allows him to interact with human beings in a detached fashion, Tereza’s occupation as a photographer reflects her willingness to be personally acquainted with the pains and struggles of other people. (During the Russian invasion of Prague, wonderfully rendered in gritty, newsreel-like footage, she risks her life to capture images of her countrymen being threatened and injured by the invading military.) She knows about and suffers from Tomas’ philandering and philosophy of remoteness, alternately trying to understand it, fight against it, and flee from it. Tereza’s affection and devotion are visceral and all-encompassing, and bind her and those caught up in them to the responsibility, moral commitment, and potential pain of the human world.
Interestingly, although Tereza seems to have an accurate view of their disparate personalities, she believes that she is weak in her emotional attachment to the world and Tomas is strong in his distance from it. But is she right in this? After the invasion of their homeland, Sabina, Tomas, and Tereza all embark on journeys both geographic and personal, beginning in Geneva. Sabina acquires a new lover who appears perfect until he leaves his wife for her; she then literally runs away in fear and escapes to continue her rambling life in America. Tomas and Tereza, however, return to Czechoslovakia, first to Prague and then to the countryside, where, away from the cultured aloofness and myriad sexual temptations of the city, Tomas at last declares himself happy. Has he finally and bravely anchored himself to the world and found fulfillment there? As the unforgetably bittersweet ending reminds us, no one’s attachments to life are that strong.
Both the novel and the movie ask us, given the fact that we cannot know if the decisions we make are for the better or the worse, is it better to live an attached or detached life? Though others have disagreed with me, I think the answer is left in the air.
There were plenty of awkward moments over the two nights that it took Laura and I to finish the movie. Tereza and Tomas’ relationship at times parallels our own. In fact, I would say the only real difference I can find between myself and Tomas (besides the cheesy way he asks for a cognac and how women fall for him after two seconds) is that he is not affected by guilt and I am. Which is why I do not cheat on Laura - I cannot find any moral justification for it - but I would be much more affected by the guilt than the pleasure of sex. That is one thing that I always wish Kundera explained in the book - how it is that Tomas goes on unaffected after causing Teresa so much pain.
Otherwise there are many similarities. I am detached, Laura is attached. For me life is light and playful, for Laura, she is overcome by a wave of strong emotions in reaction to just about everything. I easily flee from what I consider useless tribulation, Laura drowns herself in it. My world is light and hers is heavy.
Which one is better I still know not.
An Oso Production
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