Review of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) by R M — 17 Dec 2007

Ultimately, the movie explores the central question of the book that the movie is based on: how do people deal with the seeming lightness of their being? Although this question seems to be answered epigrammatically in the beginning of the book, "the reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted,â?? the progress of the story and the finality suggest otherwise: despite this seeming lightness and in spite of the fact that people need not care about the consequences of what they do, many of us, if not all are still burdened by a sense of significance and responsibility arbitrarily imposed on our lives by us.

The movie does an excellent job in elaborating this central idea.