The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Movie And Book Comparison Essay

[TITLE] In The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Milan Kundera chronicles the lives of a Czech brain surgeon Tomas, his wife Tereza and mistress Sabina, and her lover Franz. In addition to depicting the personal relationships between these characters, Kundera explores the political situation of communist Czech society during and following the 1968 Prague Spring. In Philip Kaufman’s 1988 adaptation, his struggle lay in including the central character and narrator of the novel, an omniscient and involved onlooker who infuses the novel with his own philosophical discourse built on aphorisms and thought experiments. While Kaufman puts some of the philosophical points directly in the speech of the characters in the film, other messages are

A central theme for both the book and the film is the interweaving of the public, or political sphere, and the private life. As a light character described as “the complete opposite of kitsch” (##), Tomas does not subscribe to popular political movements or marital standards purely out of sentiment. In one scene of the adaptation that takes place at a dance club, Kaufman makes several choices that integrate multiple key moments of the book. Both Kundera and Koffman depict Tomas’s recognition of the extent of both his devotion to and jealousy of Tereza as she dances with his colleague in this scene. However, whereas in Kundera’s novel most political grievances against the Communists come directly from the narrator, in this scene Tomas outwardly voices them. Kaufman layers several themes in this scene to construct a defining scene for Tomas both personally and

The basis for Kaufman’s version of this scene comes from Part 1 (Chapter 7) and Part 2 (Chapter 14) of the book. The couple goes to the bar with friends to celebrate Tereza’s promotion “from darkroom technician to staff photographer” (17). According to Kundera, everyone but Tomas dances, so Tereza dances with “one of his younger colleagues” (17). While watching her, he realizes his attraction is deeper than infatuation, and he is falling in love with her: “Tomas found her more beautiful than ever. He looked on in amazement with the split-second precision and deference with which Tereza anticipated her partner’s will” (17). However, to Tomas this moment represents more than a dance. As he watches Tereza, he begins agonizing over the idea that Tereza’s affection is not necessarily distinctive to him: “The dance seemed to him a declaration that her devotion, her ardent desire to satisfy his every whim, was not necessarily bound to his person, that if she hadn’t met Tomas, she would have been ready to respond to the call of any other man she might have met instead” (17). Despite all of Tomas’s sexual exploits, he experiences a wave of jealousy over sexual crimes Tereza hasn’t even committed. By growing attached to a woman for a quality other than sex,