By all accounts - many of them here, on IMDb - this went down well on its initial release possibly because of the similar blend of politics and great loves to that we had already seen in Dr. Zhivago, another movie in which Russia was the third angle of the eternal triangle. Like Zhivago this was also based on a well-known novel albeit one I haven't read so I can comment only on the film. This may be only the second film featuring Daniel Day Lewis that I have actually seen albeit he appears to flavour of every alternate month and the delight of the Academic-Pseud axis. I found no evidence of why this should be so in There Will Be Blood and nor do I here. I see an actor who is competent, knows how to hit his marks and deliver dialogue but anything more than this eludes me. Juliette Binoche is, as usual with her, outstanding, and Lena Olin manages to hold her own. Apart from that ...

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is an amazing novel. Therefore one would expect its film adaptation to be at least decent. But no!!! This is just too bad! I admit that I already had an opinion of what the characters should be like. I visualised Teresa as a young, ethereal beauty, with fragile charm which would be enough to make a committed bachelor feel like he needs to take her under his arms and protect her. Albeit, Juliette Binoche acts like a caricature, seems almost mentally challenged at times and fails to portray an amiable character. On the other hand Tomas is a charming mature man of a pensive nature that never fails to smile to and flirt with women. What did we get? A flamboyant womanizer, yet one more caricature, that shared nothing with Tomas and made this film comical and flat. And why the silly accents? Either make a Czech film or an English film. I found this offensive if I am honest. I have not seen any other Kaufman films, but I very much doubt that I will after this traumatic experience. This film is a poor adaptation and even as a stand-alone makes not much sense, being long and slow but without exploring space or time!

Maybe it's because I'm not old enough to have witnessed life in the sixties myself, but nothing in this movie made any sense to me.The dialogs were strange and often nonsensical. People's behavior was often strange and the movie never gave any real insight into their motivations. And if there was any character development, it certainly was lost on me. I found it pretty impossible to connect with any of the main characters at all, and for a movie like this it seems pretty essential to be able to connect with at least its main characters.I hoped the movie would start making sense by the end, but unfortunately it never did. It was a total waste of almost 3 hours of my life...

I watched this with an open mind. I loved the book (LOVED) and knew (read) that the movie wasn't a direct reflection of the book , which, given the nature and style of the book, makes sense. But what I didn't expect was how shallow and bad the 'adaptation' was. I thought that when a director decides to tackle such issues and to deal with such a great book, he would try harder, or at least be much deeper, and I thought such actors would not take part in something that bad. From the very beginning I was very unsatisfied. I thought I was watching a comedy. Something very American about the first part of the movie. The scene in the spa, the way Tomas was portrayed. Too cocky. A character with no 'weight' or even flesh. It's as though the director told Daniel 2 words to describe his role before they started shooting: You are a cocky womanizer. period. The way he was inspecting Tereza after she got out of the pool! I couldn't believe that it was actually happening. I was laughing, whereas I would be reading Kundera's deep thoughts about this chance encounter. about Fate. Did Tereza really have to pick her nose while waiting at Tomas' door for the first time? Is this really the way to show us how naive and simple she is? really, what kind of woman picks her nose while standing in front of a man she has a crush on (or any man)? And did she have to act like a dumb retarded person the whole time? Tomas.. I don't remember ever meeting someone like Tomas, in real life. He is so unconvincing. It's like a kids movie where characters are either black or white, so the little ones can tell who is good and who is evil. Can't a womanizer be more subtle? OK, he is handsome and we know he sleeps around and loves women, can you now make him a real human being, so we can buy the whole story? And what about the silly accents? Are they Czech? is that why they have accents? why are they talking in English then? If you want the audience to forget about the whole language issue, then make them speak in English and forget about the accents. Lets forget about the language and focus on the dialogue. But what's the point in making a British actor fake a strange accent in order to play a Czech character who speaks English with his Czech friends???? it only helped in keeping me aware all the time that these people are acting. Sabina's character was very irritating to me, while she was very intriguing in the book. The "Stop This Noise" scene was very bad. Franz was a character with no flesh or meat. Was he a weak character? why was he agreeing with her like that? In the book, we knew enough about him (and Sabina) so we could make sense of their relationship and interaction. But not here. It's as though the director relied on the fact that we know about the characters from the book and will fill in the gaps. That's what I was doing at least, relying on my knowledge of the characters to make sense of some scenes.I can go on...I think if you attempt to turn this unusual book into a film, then you should be able to use unusual ways to create an unusual film with unusual structure, as opposed to the conventional usual narrative and storytelling. It takes a brave daring filmmaker to deal with such book. Mr. Kaufmann is not. He belongs in Hollywood.This film proves one thing: if you base your lousy film on a great book, there's good chance you will get away with it, and even get praised for it.