DEMOLISHING THE SCENERY: MILAN KUNDERA’S UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING AND ITS FILM ADAPTATION

Abstract

This paper takes a look at Milan Kundera’s seminal novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, published in 1984 as a fictional document depicting events surrounding the Prague Spring of 1968 and subsequent Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, and its American-produced film adaptation, released in 1988, exactly 20 years after the fact and a year before the Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution. It attempts to position both the novel and the film within the specific historical context, while allowing room for the specificities of both works to be examined in detail. The article views the source and the adaptation as complementary rather than original vs. derivative works, and focuses its analysis on several specific elements: the politics espoused by both the book and the movie, the novel’s fantastical elements, the representation of the body and the structure of both the novel and the film and what effects they strive to achieve on the consumer.