Unbearable Lightness of Being movie -- resistance to statism

[cjtkirk]

I just saw this movie....Its an incredibly beautiful film about the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968 but more importantly about how to conduct oneself around statists.     The lightness of being, the beauty, the sex.....oh, the sex is like nothing ever filmed before or since.     

 

Highly recommended!

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096332/

[Dumitru]

I admit I don't remember the whole movie but what impressed me the most was that the main character had a serious lack of empathy and was a little bit self destructive, this was confirmed at the end. Good movie indeed though.

[PatrickC]

I agree with Dumitru, lack of empathy from the main character. I think the actor was Daniel Day Lewis who always plays nihilists really well. But I agree with the OP, a beautiful movie all the same.

[Josh F]

I found the movie to be a terrible adaptation of the book, which is mostly about idiosyncrasies and relationships.  It is a very lovely story about how relationships develop out of a series of unshared reactions and associations.  So being naked with a hat in the mirror might take on different meanings for the girl standing naked and the guy watching her, and how those different meanings come from completely idiosyncratic origins. And each character embodies some really interesting qualities, like how the body betrays your intentions, dreams, and other stuff... GREAT book.

[King David]

Check out my post on The Denial of Existential Realities in philosophy

KD

[King David]

I admit I don't remember the whole movie but what impressed me the most was that the main character had a serious lack of empathy and was a little bit self destructive, this was confirmed at the end. Good movie indeed though.

 

The lack of empathy that Thomas exhibits is the nihilistic  archetype that is meant to convey that he takes his sexual persona too lightly to really care about his relationships.  The other guy, I forgot his name, takes his sexual persona too seriously to make light of the heavy effect that your sexual persona has on the people in your life.  Together they explain the human condition for sexual existentialism, I've not seen the movie but the book is really about all four of them with the two female equivalents and a bowlers hat thrown in for a good time.

 

I didn't find the ending tragic, not in the novel at least.  It was a chance occurrence in a infinite possibility universe.  Like the girl says at the end, that she thought he must have been happy if he was taking joy rides into the country with his partner at that stage of his life, he just was never any good with mechanics.

 

KD