craig-20741 I don't know why Kunderas didn't like the movie. Maybe because the movie was actually better than the book. No spoilers, but I'll just say that there were a few subtle yet significant changes in the film that made this movie a truly moving experience.

writers_reign By all accounts - many of them here, on IMDb - this went down well on its initial release possibly because of the similar blend of politics and great loves to that we had already seen in Dr. Zhivago, another movie in which Russia was the third angle of the eternal triangle. Like Zhivago this was also based on a well-known novel albeit one I haven't read so I can comment only on the film. This may be only the second film featuring Daniel Day Lewis that I have actually seen albeit he appears to flavour of every alternate month and the delight of the Academic-Pseud axis. I found no evidence of why this should be so in There Will Be Blood and nor do I here. I see an actor who is competent, knows how to hit his marks and deliver dialogue but anything more than this eludes me. Juliette Binoche is, as usual with her, outstanding, and Lena Olin manages to hold her own. Apart from that ...

acquiesce_7 The Unbearable Lightness of Being is an amazing novel. Therefore one would expect its film adaptation to be at least decent. But no!!! This is just too bad! I admit that I already had an opinion of what the characters should be like. I visualised Teresa as a young, ethereal beauty, with fragile charm which would be enough to make a committed bachelor feel like he needs to take her under his arms and protect her. Albeit, Juliette Binoche acts like a caricature, seems almost mentally challenged at times and fails to portray an amiable character. On the other hand Tomas is a charming mature man of a pensive nature that never fails to smile to and flirt with women. What did we get? A flamboyant womanizer, yet one more caricature, that shared nothing with Tomas and made this film comical and flat. And why the silly accents? Either make a Czech film or an English film. I found this offensive if I am honest. I have not seen any other Kaufman films, but I very much doubt that I will after this traumatic experience. This film is a poor adaptation and even as a stand-alone makes not much sense, being long and slow but without exploring space or time!

justincward Daniel Day-Lewis is a philandering Czech brain surgeon who goes on to marry naive medical receptionist -turned-photographer Juliet Binoche, but still can't stop chasing girls and still carries on with his soulmate Sabine because of their shared bowler (Derby) hat fetish. In the end, The Soviet Union's 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia indirectly gives Daniel and Juliette's fragile relationship the boost it needed, only for tragedy to strike, in a 'Wages of Fear' kind of way. Yes, I did watch to the end.The dishy doctor's chat-up line is 'Tek off your cloze". Seems to work every time. That's about all that happens for the first few hours. We get a lot of shots of panties, then bottoms and bosoms, but still no real plot. It seems that Prague in 1968 was a seething hotbed of sexual experimentation.TULOB is a quality epic - big budget, big names, many locations, much period detail - but deadly pretentious. Daniel Day-Lewis's Tomasz is like Sam Malone from 'Cheers' with a very serious case of pathological narcissism. Juliette Binoche overacts terribly; were her character a real person everyone would constantly get very annoyed with her. Lena Olin puts in a believable turn as the exotic, possibly bisexual Sabine, who has a fling with a married man in a subplot that is completely pointless, something like her love affair.It's atmospheric, immersive, and reminiscent of a modern Dr. Zhivago - star-crossed lovers against the background of political upheaval with a tragic (and predictable) ending - but the supersoft-porn aspects are ridiculous; obviously done from a commercial imperative and nothing else. You could speculate that Juliet Binoche's wide-eyed character (raped by a Russian) symbolises the Czech republic's burgeoning yearning for freedom, but then the pseudo-intellectual police would be at your door in a flash.I knew the dog was doomed, and actually predicted the 'Tek off your cloze' line the third time - but that was half the fun. Well, I've gone on long enough, it's a shame nobody told the director Phil Kaufman after ninety minutes.