Good concept, poorly executed.

Blistering performances.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

According to a number of reviews that I've read (here on IMDb) - This 1988 movie was, apparently, an absolute corruption of the novel, which was written by Czech-writer, Milan Kundera, in 1984.Perhaps this was so (I haven't read Kundera's book) - But I will tell you one thing that's totally true - At a 3-hour running time, "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" was, indeed, totally unbearable to tolerate.Regardless of containing some deliberately distracting, soft-core erotica, thrown into the story for good measure, the love-triangle that transpired between Tomas, Tereza and Sabina was such a tiresome, little, cry-baby affair that any gratuitous sexuality wedged into the action only served to render the rest of the story as being nothing but a blasted bore.Set in Prague in the year 1968 - Believe me, this film was very-very dry storytelling.And, I think that that dullard, actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, was totally miscast as the fickle, conceited, playboy doctor who seemed to spend a good part of his waking hours dutifully jumping in and out of bed with one babe after another.

Milan Kundera's philosophical novel 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' was always going to be difficult to film, a story of lives lived, ordinarily, against a backdrop of politics and eroticism. Philip Kaufamn's attempt is long, has a wonderful score, chooses to have its cast speak English in eastern European accents, showcases Juliet Binoche's beauty, and I think succeeds in avoiding the heaviness, the moral weight, that the story's characters find fundamentally absent from the business of simply being alive from one moment to the next. What it doesn't quite capture is the novel's intellectual playfulness, the authorial wisdom within which the original story was set, which in the book substitutes for the enforced narrative drive of most novels. Whereas some films are best enjoyed by those who haven't seen the source material, this one might work best for those who have: otherwise, some audiences could miss the point. Nonetheless, the ending is strangely affecting and true to the original story; and Daniel Day Lewis surprisingly good as a middle class Czech philanderer.

Daniel Day-Lewis is a philandering Czech brain surgeon who goes on to marry naive medical receptionist -turned-photographer Juliet Binoche, but still can't stop chasing girls and still carries on with his soulmate Sabine because of their shared bowler (Derby) hat fetish. In the end, The Soviet Union's 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia indirectly gives Daniel and Juliette's fragile relationship the boost it needed, only for tragedy to strike, in a 'Wages of Fear' kind of way. Yes, I did watch to the end.The dishy doctor's chat-up line is 'Tek off your cloze". Seems to work every time. That's about all that happens for the first few hours. We get a lot of shots of panties, then bottoms and bosoms, but still no real plot. It seems that Prague in 1968 was a seething hotbed of sexual experimentation.TULOB is a quality epic - big budget, big names, many locations, much period detail - but deadly pretentious. Daniel Day-Lewis's Tomasz is like Sam Malone from 'Cheers' with a very serious case of pathological narcissism. Juliette Binoche overacts terribly; were her character a real person everyone would constantly get very annoyed with her. Lena Olin puts in a believable turn as the exotic, possibly bisexual Sabine, who has a fling with a married man in a subplot that is completely pointless, something like her love affair.It's atmospheric, immersive, and reminiscent of a modern Dr. Zhivago - star-crossed lovers against the background of political upheaval with a tragic (and predictable) ending - but the supersoft-porn aspects are ridiculous; obviously done from a commercial imperative and nothing else. You could speculate that Juliet Binoche's wide-eyed character (raped by a Russian) symbolises the Czech republic's burgeoning yearning for freedom, but then the pseudo-intellectual police would be at your door in a flash.I knew the dog was doomed, and actually predicted the 'Tek off your cloze' line the third time - but that was half the fun. Well, I've gone on long enough, it's a shame nobody told the director Phil Kaufman after ninety minutes.

Takes place in 1968. Something about a Czech man named Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) who (somehow) has a VERY active sex life with numerous women. Then some revolution occurs...or something. Frankly I was so utterly bored I could have cared less.I caught this up a theatre with a friend in 1988 (she's female, I'm male). Neither one us read the book and had no idea what the movie was about. We just knew it had gotten raves from critics. Both of us are intelligent with college degrees and have no problem with a talky movie. Well this movie was virtually all talk. Sadly none of it was interesting! For starters it was badly cast. It was almost funny to see all these women eagerly undressing and jumping into bed with Tomas. Day-Lewis is (to be blunt) ugly here and gives a dull and lifeless performance. The women in his life are given next to no personality of depth. They're just there to be used. The story droned on and on and on and ON! My mind kept wandering while trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Towards the last hour or so I was fighting to stay awake. My friend agreed. We walked out of the movie tearing it to ribbons pointing out the lousy acting and incomprehensible story line. I tried watching it again recently and gave up after 45 minutes. Again--the acting sucked and the story went NOwhere! Skip this one. Even Day-Lewis didn't like it.