#头条创作挑战赛#
Recently, farewell seems to have become a theme in life.
We just said goodbye to Li Min last week.
This week we parted with the writer Milan Kundera.
Kundera died in Paris on July 11 at the age of 94.
Kundera is a writer with a rich life experience and has left a strong mark in the history of world literature.
In 1967, his first novel, Joke, was banned as a banned book.
Two years later, he was expelled from the Czech Writers' Association and later stripped of his nationality.
His most important works, The Book of Laughter and Forgetfulness and The Unbearable Lightness of Life, were completed in France and were banned in the Czech Republic for a long time until the end of the 1980s.
In 2019, Kundera was finally restored to citizenship by the Czech government.
Many of Kundera's books have been adapted into film and television works.
The most well-known of these is the film "Prague Love" adapted from "The Unbearable Lightness of Life".
In this week's lust column, Uncle Yu is waiting for everyone to review this classic film.
It is also through this that Milan Kundera said goodbye.
"Prague Love"
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Unbearable Lightness of Life is an epic novel.
It was also this work that propelled Kundera's name onto the stage of world literature.
There have been waves of "Kundera craze" around the world.
The adapted movie "Prague Love" is naturally also heavyweight.
If nothing else, the cast alone is eye-catching enough.
The heroine is a French "national treasure" actress, Juliette Binoche.
The male protagonist is a top British actor, Daniel Day-Lewis.
The former later starred in many high-scoring classics such as "Red, White and Blue Trilogy", "New Bridge Lover", "English Patient" and so on.
She has become the most internationally influential and highest-paid actress in France.
The latter later became the first Oscar "Triple Crown King" in film history with "My Left Foot", "Blood Will Come" and "Lincoln".
With a high-quality original book and excellent actors, "Prague Love" finally lived up to expectations and won an excellent transcript.
From the Oscars, Golden Globes to the American Film Critics Association.
From Best Picture to Best Director, there are many nominations and many awards.
Interestingly, Kundera didn't buy the adaptation.
He has publicly expressed his dislike for the film more than once.
Even because of this film, he has since refused to make any form of adaptation.
There is only one reason: color.
Kundera believes that the film only superficially emphasizes the "erotic" component.
How "colored" is it?
The first line of the entire movie is:
Take off your clothes.
Thomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a famous brain doctor in Prague.
In contrast to jobs that require ultra-high professionalism and precision skills, Thomas's chaotic private life.
He has many "sexual partners".
The nurse in the hospital, the waitress in the pub, the sexy woman in the magazine...
Thomas's only rule in life is to remain independent.
He never spent the night at his girlfriend's house, and vice versa.
If you really can't escape the moment when the woman stays for one night, she will also use insomnia as an excuse to refuse to share a bed with the other party.
Thomas never took the initiative to get to know the people he loved.
He decisively refused to have an intellectual connection with women.
As for the so-called "spiritual union", Thomas does not accept it.
With such an attitude, Rao is his most suitable "partner" painter Sabina (played by Lena Olin) also feels magical.
Are you just looking for pleasure?
Or is every woman like a new land, full of secrets you want to discover?
But as the saying goes: If you often walk by the river, how can you not get wet shoes?
Theresa (Juliette Binoche), a waitress in a country bar, breaks the rules of Thomas's game on earth.
She was different from the women around Thomas.
Teresa is not charming, immature, and even a little childish.
But like a pink peach, the crisp one, as long as you bite it is refreshing.
Such a Theresa caught Thomas's attention.
However, experienced hunters will not take the initiative.
Thomas used a hand of lust to let Theresa take the initiative to jump into his arms:
—Can I get my bill to my room?
—Absolutely.
—What a coincidence, you live in room 6.
—So what?
—And I leave work at 6 o'clock.
- At 6 o'clock, I have to go back to Prague, but actually, around 6 o'clock.
In fact, it is not surprising that Theresa would be stupid and throw herself into the net.
She spends all day in a place where there are only old people.
Suddenly appearing such a handsome and dashing man as Thomas, it is difficult not to be moved.
So, after Thomas returned to Prague, Theresa took the initiative to find him.
Thomas, a doctor, took off her clothes one by one on the pretext that Theresa might be sick and wanted to examine her.
Then the two kissed together like thunder and fire, unwilling to separate.
Interestingly, Thomas, who has always been comfortable in affairs, seems particularly impatient this time.
With his pants halfway off and a strap on his neck, he couldn't wait to pick up Teresa and run to the bed.
Theresa is indeed a special one.
Not only did she break Thomas's "no overnight" rule, but also lived in his house.
It can even make him feel jealous.
In the end, he agreed to marry him and start a stable relationship protected by law.
But even Thomas already had a legal wife.
The carcasses of other women have not been removed from their lives.
And Teresa is not ignorant of this.
Such an intertwined and open relationship between men and women stimulates a sultry and passionate picture.
Indeed, as Kundera puts it, "erotica is emphasized."
But don't think Kundera is a conservative person.
Just read his work and you'll find:
Sex has always been an indispensable part of his story.
When The Unbearable Lightness of Life was first published, Kundera said:
I remember when I was editing my last novel, Laughing and Forgot, a letter from a female reader made me very happy. He said she couldn't read because I only wrote about sex.
But in fact, Kundera did not care much about the process of sex.
He prefers to depict things before or after this happened.
Because, for Kundera, desire has always been just an expression he uses to explore the theme of life.
It's like this love story that belongs to three people in the film.
As mentioned earlier, even after entering marriage, Thomas and Sabina still maintain a bed partnership.
Theresa also knew it.
But none of the three men picked on it, but formed a delicate balance.
Even Sabina helped Teresa discover her talent for photography.
The reason for this relationship is determined by the attitude of the three of them.
This is also Kundera's consistent philosophical thinking:
Kitsch and anti-kitsch.
What is kitsch?
Macroscopic speaking, it is a kind of behavior or attitude that caters to the world, lacks self-thought, self-reason, and only knows how to follow the trend.
In fact, the specific meaning of kitsch has different interpretations in different situations.
Placed in "Prague Love", it is the character's view of love and desire.
For Thomas, kitsch is all about having a normal love relationship.
In order to oppose this kitsch, he insisted on the separation of sex and love.
It's not that he can't love, otherwise he wouldn't have married Theresa.
However, he will not stop having relationships with other women because of a marriage.
Even if this behavior will cause a lot of damage to Theresa and make her fall into an endless nightmare.
In Thomas's mind, this is not a betrayal, but an attitude that is not kitsch.
But Theresa is the opposite.
In her heart, kitsch is to indulge in simple sex.
She couldn't understand why her husband could treat it so casually:
I know that in your opinion, love and sex are not the same.
Sex is just entertainment, like football.
But without love, how to have sex?
Therefore, Theresa's anti-kitsch way is to insist on purity and self-love and be loyal to Thomas.
Even if the husband is still out and about having fun.
Sabina, on the other hand, is a staunch anti-kitschist.
Her definition of kitsch is largely the same as Thomas's, which is conformism and commitment to intimacy.
So she maintained a physical relationship with Thomas while communicating with his wife on an equal footing.
Likewise, she won't be just Thomas alone.
It's just that when the suitor divorces for her, Sabina will disappear and leave without saying a word, without any nostalgia.
Kundera, however, had no intention of simply showing defiance.
Instead, he let these characters sink into kitsch in his own mouth in the process of anti-kitsch.
Because of the unrest in the Czech Republic, Teresa and Thomas fled to Switzerland.
So did Sabina.
The relationship between the three is still the same.
Teresa, who insisted on being faithful, eventually could not bear such a husband and chose to return to the Czech Republic alone.
The departure of his wife should have been a relief for Thomas.
He did go crazy for a while.
However, Thomas gradually felt uneasy, he began to miss Teresa and longed to return to her.
And Sabina has clearly been fleeing intimacy all her life.
However, before going to the United States, he was saddened because he realized that he would not be able to see Thomas again.
To put it bluntly, whether it is Thomas, or Theresa, or Sabina, they are just a microcosm of all living beings.
Anti-kitsch, but never able to get rid of kitsch.
This is the argument about life that Kundera threw us.
The weight that life can bear.
This is an issue that cannot be ignored in both the original book and the movie.
In the movie, when Teresa left Thomas, she left behind a letter that reads:
Life is too heavy for me, but so light for you.
I cannot bear the lightness of this life, I cannot bear this freedom.
It seems to be saying that he and Thomas have a different definition of love.
In fact, it is also expressing the pain of being crushed by the giant wheel of history as an individual.
In Kundera's writing, history is the undertone of all stories.
The story takes place in 1968.
This number is not only a year, but also represents the "Prague Spring" that shocked the world.
The vigorous reform movement in Czechoslovakia came and went quickly.
Eventually, it turned into a brutal and violent crackdown.
As part of the defense of freedom, Teresa and Thomas took to the streets to protest and cry.
Theresa also recorded it all on camera.
And this move undoubtedly angered the privileged group.
Theresa was arrested and the film snatched.
That's why Thomas fled to Switzerland with Theresa.
Unlike the purgatory, Geneva, a paradise of pleasure.
Teresa wanted to use her photos of the struggle to find a job at the newspaper.
But I never thought that these terrible things that were happening were not as valued as a few photos of nude women or even cacti.
This is also the lightness of life that Teresa cannot bear.
However, after returning to the Czech Republic, Thomas and Theresa faced enough weight to make them unable to breathe, but they could not escape.
Prague is not what it once was.
Tanks and guards are everywhere.
And the watchers you can't see but are everywhere.
If a single thing is wrong, it will be doomed.
However, it's not just about being careful in the moment.
In the past, when he was relatively liberal, Thomas satirized the Soviet government with a Greek mythological story and published it in a newspaper.
At the time, it seemed like it was just a fun essay.
But now, it has become Thomas's talisman.
One day at work, an Interior Office worker popped up and asked Thomas to sign a statement.
A statement to acknowledge "mistakes" and show "determination".
Thomas refused out of conscience and faith.
As a result, a top brain specialist became a sanitation worker who cleaned windows.
What about Theresa?
Her camera was confiscated and she had to go back to her old job, a barmaid.
At that time, Teresa was being tortured by her husband's theory of "separation of flesh and soul".
To test this theory, she eventually puts aside her clinging to chastity and sleeps with a strange man she meets at a bar.
Unexpectedly, this man is most likely a secret policeman.
This accidental experiment may invite death for himself and Thomas.
So the two fled again and settled in the countryside.
Kundera once proposed a theory:
We all need to be stared at.
Because only by staring, can we remember, and we will not forget.
In the movie, there are many shots with obvious gaze meaning.
The most classic scene is when Teresa asks Sabina to be her model.
Teresa pointed her camera at Sabina without a wisp.
She looked at Sabina through the camera in her hand.
In this foreign country in Geneva, face the woman who caused the pain of her love.
Theresa probably thought a lot, so she couldn't hold back her tears.
But just for love?
It doesn't seem to be.
At this moment, the lightness and heaviness of life have different measurement results under the words of history.
In the story, they gaze at each other in different ways.
Outside the story, we are also gazing at history through the lens of the camera, through the characters, through Kundera's words.
These gazes will not stop because Kundera passed away.
Just as he left us with thoughts, it will not disappear.
And this is probably the meaning of literature and film.