What ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ Tells Us About Humans and Other Animals
Tereza’s love of animals means more than you might realize
When Daniel Day Lewis married Juliette Binoche, a piglet attended the ceremony. Celebrating with champagne at a busy restaurant later that day, Binoche flagged down a woman carrying a basket of puppies. “Oh, let’s save one,” she said. Then she added, softly, “It will make us happy.”
The surreal events, of course, were fictional — a moment captured in the 1988 adaptation of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Binoche played Tereza, the reserved yet gutsy daughter from a rural Czech town, who becomes a photojournalist documenting Prague’s social and political upheaval. Lewis portrayed Tomas, a philandering doctor with an insatiable craving for sex. In both the film adaptation and the original novel, Thomas and Tereza’s troubled relationship occupies the story’s central focus, playing out against a backdrop of erotic and philosophical musings.
Movies and novels present two distinct modes of narrative; inevitably, some scenes and characters were embellished or erased when Hollywood producers took the helm. Yet among the narrative elements the screen adaptation abandoned, one thread in particular stands out. From dogs to cows, birds, and pigs, The…
