So I had always heard of this movie and wanted to see it at some point in my life, hey even the cast of Friends mentions this movie. I finally put in on my queue since Netlflix offered a streaming version. I had to watch it over the course of two consecutive nights since it is a three hour movie. I ended up enjoying the film but didn’t really see what the big deal was although I think it may have lost some of it’s flavor, now twenty plus years later.
The plot follows a Czech couple (who speak English ) that falls in love and get married right in the midst of the Cold War and Soviet invasion. Tomas, Daniel Day Lewis, is a renowned brain surgeon and falls in love with a simple small town girl, Juliette Binoche. Even though he falls in love, this doesn’t stop his active sex life, and most prominently with his closest friend, Lena Olin. The stories follows the lives of these three characters from the before the invasion until after.
The characters are very believable and somewhat complex, after all the film is adapted from a novel. Their actions are correlated to their personalities and even though each have their own flaws, we sympathize for them. The plot is quite long and includes a lot of material. As a history major, I enjoyed the bits and pieces of history which spurred a lot of plot turns. Honestly, the plot wouldn’t have really made much sense or have been so prolific without the history in there.
The film was obviously made in the 80’s and had some weak editing which was jumpy and not cohesive throughout the movie, but again this was 1988 and non linear editing was still a learning process. That being said, there was some awesome camera work in here. Especially the first love scene between Lena Olin and Daniel Day Lewis where it’s a reverse shot from a mirror on the floor was just great. There were other shots such as these in the movie. I miss this time of avante guarde camera angles, such as in The Graduate from the same era. I also loved how they used real footage from the Soviet invasion and spliced it in with new footage with the actors shot to look the same. That was innovative and gave it real legitimacy to the film. It’s also even better because this was filmed right at the end of the Cold War and stood on it’s own feet even with backlash from the Soviet power.
The three leads did an equally superb job with their roles. Juliette Binoche achieved the most character development but the other two were playing characters which were already pretty well developed. Yes, there were a lot of sex scenes in the movie but it wasn’t completely gratuitous and incorporated innovative and interesting aspects into them. The actors worked extremely well with each other which made them all the more believable. The only thing that wasn’t exactly believable was that they were all speaking in English to one another, but oh well. At least their accents were believable.
I see now why the movie would have been a big deal back in 1988. With today’s generation, who don’t even know about the “Tear down that wall” speech or that The Cold War wasn‘t a typical war, the importance of this movie will probably be lost. I would recommend this to an older audience who hasn’t already seen the movie. I enjoyed it and I’m glad I experienced it but it was just a good movie. “Take off your clothes” -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
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