Karenin's Smile - From "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" to "Love in Prague"

Camylle 2022-03-25 09:01:14

First, I would like to think of The Unbearable Lightness of Being as a book about truth. Teresa, Thomas and Sabina, they are the image symbols weaving in the web of existentialism, oscillating between light and heavy, and their appearance leads to the narration after each chapter in the book - from the author's view on human nature , the insight of fate, the revelation of the politicized social connotation, the thinking about the existence of spirit and flesh, light and heavy. The beginning of the novel puts a philosophical perspective on it: "Nietzsche often entangles with philosophers a mysterious "return of all catastrophe" concept, think about what we have experienced, think about them repeating like yesterday, and even repeating themselves endlessly It goes on and on! What does this crazy delusion mean?" Even when Thomas' name first appears in the narrative, a philosophical question arises: the choice of Teresa or Sabine Na? Any knowledgeable reader can accurately predict what Kundera is clearly referring to—love and sex, or spirit or flesh, are the choice dilemmas for each of us.

And "Prague Love", I would like to regard it as a story about emotions. The nearly three-hour film could not describe all the details of the story in the detailed novel. The shadow description of the protagonist’s childhood and the description of Sabina’s lover’s wife and children in Zurich have all disappeared. The rest is Teresa. , Thomas and Sabina, who themselves do not have the mission of carrying some kind of philosophical symbol, have become the shining protagonists in the story of superimposed sound and picture. In the transition from two-dimensional text to three-dimensional images, the stories out of context are connected, and there is no third-person philosophical thinking mixed with them.

However, whether in novels that try to get close to the truth or movies that try to present a story, we observe many common and meaningful imagery, such as Sabina's black politeness and Karenin's smile. Karenin's smile is the part that has always fascinated me and fascinated me, and it becomes the finishing touch of the novel and the film that cannot be erased.

In the philosophical book of searching for the truth, the entire six chapters use a calm and restrained tone to convey philosophical thoughts through complicated images. A denial of life and history. "Karenin's Smile" is the last chapter in the book. It is the most tender title, but also, in my opinion, the most careless cruelty. What I see is a kind of sadness - a kind of thorough, humanistic denial. Karenin is a puppy that Thomas bought to relieve Teresa's loneliness. From Prague to Zurich and back to Prague, this puppy always accompanies them in the story and us outside the story, Finally returned to the turmoil of the old countryside. The novel ends with a hint of negativity: At the end of Karenin's life, Teresa finally realizes that her love with Karenin is better than her relationship with Thomas. This feeling is selfless and does not ask for anything in return.

In Kundera's seemingly uncritical, but succinct account, we see the contrast between human and animal nature, and we embrace the argument that happiness is essentially a desire for repetition. But a man with many desires cannot be satisfied with any simple repetition, and cannot be satisfied and delighted, like Karenin, for a fixed croissant every morning. Therefore, in the Bible, man is expelled from the Garden of Eden, while animals are kept. We are human because of this linear and progressive desire. We live on a one-way timeline, time cannot be reversed or repeated, and life cannot be cycled or started over again. It is precisely because of this lightness and linearity that is free from repetition, no matter how one struggles, desires, or pursues, it will never be possible to return to the Garden of Eden and obtain ultimate happiness. Karenin's smile, as the warmest expression of the cold philosophical book, is also a sign of negation in essence. After reading the whole book, all I can capture is the phantom of happiness that remains between the characters and a sadness that is close to the truth. And my only relief is that Karenin's smile, linked to Karenin's death, is still full of warmth - I think it's because Teresa's life was slowly running out. The illusion of life, history, motherland, love, and everything was broken little by little, and she also came to the end of the road. While finding the truth of life, she answered the compromise of the negation of life. How sad this compromise is, but it is inevitable. At the end of the book, we are gradually relieved, and we can only sigh: the lightness of existence may be unbearable after all.

The Karenin in the movie continues the fate in the novel, but it no longer becomes a symbol - "Karenin's smile" is a kind of warmth that is not mixed with any falsehood and is directly revealed on the screen. Perhaps it is precisely because the film is not a film that seeks to approach the truth—the truth cannot exist in the form of comedy, and the truth cannot be obtained in the form of affirmation, so the film and the novel are the opposite, although full of contradictions, sadness, constant of parting, but the attitude it presents is positive and contains an element of affirmation.

At the end of the film, Karenin ends his life smiling as in the novel, but its symbolic meaning here is completely different. Theresa, who embraced Karenin and comforted Karenin, was happy at the moment, a kind of pastoral happiness. She did not succumb to the various failures and blows she encountered before, but returned to a simple life built on simplicity and repetition, which made her feel happy. She saw Karenin smiling, repeating and calling in a low voice, slow and beautiful. What about Thomas? In contrast to the "grey-haired, exhausted, stiff-fingered, no longer able to hold the surgeon's scalpel" Thomas in the novel who is on the verge of death, in the film he is radiant with life, on the dance floor of a country tavern. Staring at Teresa with affection, embracing life in the country.

Some people say that such a setting in the movie goes against the original intention of Kundera's novel. "When you find that you are free without any mission, it is a great relief." Indeed, "liberation" is not the same as happiness, but a kind of relief after compromising with life. This is the narrative in the novel - Thomas's final image is a hare stuck to his face by Teresa in a dream, "This means forgetting that he is a strong man, which means that no one is stronger than anyone from now on."

But from the point of view of the film itself, I think I have to admit that this "Prague Love" by director Philip Kaufman is a good drama. We don't have to blame it for cutting out the philosophical part, because it's a completely new story reworked from the original script. The director tried his best to abide by the "Three Uniforms" of dramatic conflict during filming, so we see that many of the events and characters that happened in the second half of the novel appeared in the first half of the film. The story is basically a linear narrative, with very few flashbacks and interludes. Whereas in Kundera's novel the sprawling characters were reduced to a few supporting roles, the co-op president and his piggy Mephis were the first to appear at Thomas and Teresa's wedding, not at the end of the original They only appeared after a few years of seclusion.

What needs to be clarified is that although I like to present the death of Thomas and Teresa after Karenin's smile at the end of the novel, because this novel does not focus on creating suspense, what we cherish is the space for growth outside the plot, We seek existence in "interludes" and constant "digressions". And when we switched our identities to movie audiences, a kind of suspense was created. After Karenin died, we only learned of their deaths through the letter Sabina received. This kind of expression is very artistic in the film, the use of this flash forward and flashback scene - first depicts Thomas and Teresa dancing in the tavern, and then cuts to Sabina receiving a letter that the two are dead , and then continue to return to the tavern, the camera is slow and elegant, like the last movement of a symphony, lyrical and freehand, putting on the coat of happiness and contentment for the death of the two. "I'm thinking about how happy I am." That's Thomas's final, tender answer in the film. Although quite different from the Thomas image in the original book, it is another lyrical expression. To attribute this lyricism to the "kitsch" that Kundera vehemently rejects is a misreading of cinema—because, in my opinion, it's another story with a different focus.


Beginning with Karenin's smile, the values ​​presented in the novel and the film are clearly different. As an obsessed reader and viewer, I enjoy both identities at the same time and love the two different stories presented to me. For the characters in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", I read it in a way of finding the truth with Kundera - as Derrida pointed out in "Remembrance": "Name" is better than "" people" exist longer. In the process of watching "Prague Love", I experienced the joys and sorrows of the characters in the play. I searched for the joy of influence, and forgot the illusory sorrow that existed in us.

That's why I was delighted to meet Karenin both in the novel and in the film; even though the meaning behind his smile was so different, it was enough to keep me in mind.

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Extended Reading
  • Frank 2022-04-24 07:01:17

    A movie that I didn't understand before, I heard the name unexpectedly in another place. The two of them sat in the car and said, have you ever watched Prague Love? The car kept going forward and I just felt that the road they walked was very long as if there was no end. . . So I understood that feeling.

  • Cornell 2022-03-25 09:01:14

    8.2 I finally understand why the translated title is Prague Love instead of the unbearable lightness of life in the original work. The whole film omits the topic of lightness and heaviness in only two scenes, and the thoughts on spirit and flesh also disappear. The film copied the plot of the original book but cut down a lot of details. The length problem is indeed true, but the amazing Karenin smile of the original book ended in such a hasty way. It is still unacceptable. It's purely story-oriented, but Sabina's characterization is even better than Teresa's, while Thomas with Lewis looks a little lewd on screen. The photography style of the first half of the Soviet invasion is great, the whole sense of substitution and beauty comes out spontaneously

The Unbearable Lightness of Being quotes

  • Tomas: Some people never change.Some people are always scoundrels.

  • Sabina: Maybe I am seeing you for the last time?

    Tomas: Maybe.