The 1988 film "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was directed and written by the famous American filmmaker Philip Kaufman, and the original author Milan Kundera also participated in the screenwriting work.
"Love in Prague" poster
The film tells the love entanglement between Prague surgeon Thomas and two women, the painter Sabina and the waitress Theresa, supplemented by the "Prague Spring" in 1968 as the background of the film.
The film has a strong cast, playing Thomas as the first British actor in Oscar history to win three Best Actor awards (Daniel Day-Lewis), Teresa as French actress Juliette Binoche, and Sabina as Swedish actress Lena Olin.
A still from "Love in Prague"
The film was one of the top ten American films of 1988, nominated for the 1989 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Golden Globe Award for Best Feature Film and Best Supporting Actress (Lena Orin), and won the British Film and Television Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the American Film Critics Association Award for Best Director and Best Picture.
"Prague Love" is just the local title when the film was introduced to Hong Kong and Taiwan. In fact, the title comes from Kundera's novel of the same name, L'Insoutenable Légèreté de l'être, which was first published in 1984.
The novel deals with quite a few philosophical concepts, considering categories such as return, kitsch, oblivion, time, contingency, and necessity. The New York Times once said of the book – with which Milan Kundera established him as the world's greatest living writer.
"The Unbearable Lightness of Life" published in 1987, translated by Han Shaogong and Han Gang
Similar to many different translations of movie titles in the Chinese-speaking world, the Chinese translation of the book is also "a hundred flowers", initially it was translated by Han Shaogong and his sister Han Gang as "unbearable lightness in life", and later a Taiwanese version was translated as "unbearable lightness in life", in 2003 Shanghai Translation Publishing House published a version translated by Nanjing University professor Xu Jun based on the French version, and the translation of the book in mainland China was finally set as "Unbearable Lightness of Life".
The latest edition of "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" in 2022
Due to the popularity of the novel and its film adaptations, "Prague" and "The Unbearable XX" ... of ... ) has become a common word or sentence in the popular culture of various countries. For example, the Twins' album "Twins Party" released in 2007 has a song called "Prague Love", as well as the movie "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" starring Nicolas Cage, and the Korean film "Love Unbearable Light" (연애, 그 참을 수 없는 가벼움) starring Kim Seung-woo and Jang Jin-young.