2023-07-12 15:08:13
The work of the Czech writer, who has just left us this Tuesday, July 11, had influenced several filmmakers and given rise to some film adaptations. Back in five films on the relationship between Kundera and the seventh art.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being de Philip Kaufman (1988)
Only five years following the publication of Kundera’s most famous novel, Philip Kaufman signs the adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The filmmaker is confronted with a major problem: how to visually translate a work at the crossroads of the novel and the essay, which explodes the narration by multiplying the breaks in tone, the ellipses and the digressions? To do this, Kaufman and the screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière decide to simplify the romantic material and to restore the chronology of the action in order to tighten it around a trio of characters. Instead of probing the tormented soul of Thomas, a seductive surgeon, the film prefers to skilfully juggle his romances with his wife Tereza and his mistress Sabina and the historical reconstruction of the popular revolts of the Prague Spring in 1968. The photograph by Sven Nykvist (Bergman’s famous cinematographer), captures with grace and sensuality a trio of breathtaking actors, who have just started their careers: Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche (who just left Bad blood of Carax) and the Swedish Lena Olin.
Joke de Jaromil Jires (1968)
If Milan Kundera is celebrated for his literary work, he also studied cinema at the Prague Film Academy and then became a professor there. He would then exert a significant influence on the future leaders of the Czech New Wave (Milos Forman, Jirí Menzel, Vera Chytilova…), who would make cinema a tool for libertarian emancipation. In 1968, Jaromil Jires then directed the adaptation of The promise, Kundera’s first novel, published a year earlier. The story already testifies to the dissident commitment of its author by telling the story of a young communist student condemned to forced labor following having made an unfortunate joke.
no one will laugh de Hynek Bocan (1965)
Hynek Bocan also benefited from Milan Kundera’s lessons at the Prague film academy. This adaptation of a short story of his, from the collection laughable loves, follows a young art historian professor, incapable of expressing an unpleasant opinion on the works presented to him. Through a light and ironic tone, the film makes fun of this cowardly authority figure, incapable of assuming what he does and thinks, and paints a critical portrait of the conformism of the communist order.
Me, ruthless God d’Antonin Tile (1969)
This forgotten adaptation brought to the screen a short story that Kundera had finally removed from laughable loves. The film depicts the thwarted romance of Adolf, a young pianist madly in love with Jana, the singer for whom he plays. Unfortunately for him, she dreams of becoming an opera singer and is only interested in recognized artists. He then decides to take revenge by pushing her into the arms of Apostol, a Greek guerrilla, whom he pretends to be the conductor of the Athens opera.
Milan Kundera, odyssey of betrayed illusions de Jarmila Buzkova (2021)
In addition to these adaptations, a documentary made in 2021 retraces the tumultuous journey of the Czech writer. Jarmila Buzkova’s film looks back on her debut in Czechoslovakia at the Prague Academy and the upheavals caused by the Prague Spring, before the author took refuge in France from 1975 to write his most famous books. By combining archival images and the insight of specialists, the film retraces all the complexity of this journey marked by commitment, dissidence and media scandals. These biographical insights allow us to better understand the beautiful contradictions of this monument of literature, without ever completely unraveling its mystery.
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