Friday's words: In the spring of 1968, the democratic movement initiated by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia took off in its country. For a time, those writers, artists, scholars, scientists, workers, peasants, rockers, and pimps took to the streets one after another, expressing their own voices with their respective preferred behaviors. It is a pity that the movement was suppressed by the mighty tank army of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact after just a few months. Then came the decades-long repressive political rule of the Czech Republic... This "Love in Prague" shows the Czech Republic during that period. The fact that it was jointly filmed by people (including directors and actors) from different countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France is enough to prove that "Prague Spring" belongs to the whole world!
1. The similarities and differences between the film and Kundera's original novel
The film is based on Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Life". However, the nearly three-hour film could not express the philosophical concept of the original book in visual language at all. Therefore, the director only grabbed a few groups of character relationships in the novel, taking the city of Prague as the axis and historical events as the turning point to deduce a special love story.
It's just that this love story is intertwined with multiple angles and dimensions, including the disordered love (or sex) between multiple men and multiple women. These are the differences, but the same is that sex is so fragile in this changing situation, yet so precious.
2. The hidden political perspective behind the concept of "sex" of characters
In the film, the three main characters Sabina (Lina Olin), Thomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Teresa (Juliet Binoche), their characters' sexuality and even love. quite different-
Sabina has an unrestrained character , dares to love and hates, she can tolerate the person she loves to go out and make trouble, she can even become good friends with her lover's lover, however, such an open woman likes to stay single, alone; ( She chose to leave during the turmoil)
Teresa is on the contrary. Although she is also cheerful, she is relatively conservative in terms of love, marriage and sexuality. Although she is also trying to change herself, she cannot escape the pain;
Thomas happens to be between the characters of two women. You can naturally say that his behavior of constantly looking for stimulation of the opposite sex is an instinctive selfishness. However, Thomas is a little hesitant and passive between this instinctive choice. helpless...
There is nothing special about the three characters, and this book is at most a second- or third-rate erotic film. However, the political turmoil has enriched these loves and desires with new meanings - in the face of that political catastrophe, the three decided to stay and stay differently due to their different personalities and values -
Sabina went to Switzerland before the Soviet invasion of Prague, from which she immigrated to the United States;
Thomas and Teresa got married and experienced the political movement. After that, they escaped from the motherland passively, and then returned to the country because it was difficult to part with them. In the end, the two lived in seclusion in the Czech countryside until they died in a car accident.
Yes, this kind of going and staying determines their different life destiny. And the fate frame in this kind of film, I think it is a political perspective of the director: for the Czech people of that era, leaving and staying were their only two paths, and we could not use escape, bear, fate To sum up them, because in the director's view, either choice is unfortunate, because those love, sex, and national hatred have already firmly bound every Czech person together.
3. I'd rather be the unthinking "pig" in the movie. In the movie, it's not only people who suffer from political turmoil, but also a dog and a pig. The dog was adopted by Thomas and Teresa, so he As they traveled from China to abroad and back to China, in the end, the dog got cancer and died painfully; on the contrary, the other pig suffered a little different, it also experienced social turmoil and discrimination from the people around it. However, it was born with an immunity to political and class persecution, and the reason, in the words of its master: it does not know how to think.
The question is, when we face difficulties and dangers, should we choose to stick our heads into the ground to resist the sandstorm like an ostrich, or stay out of the way like Sabina and go free? Or like the pig , Don't think about it, will everything be fine? I think this is also a kind of simulation thinking of the director about facing difficult and dangerous situations.
4. Everyone should have a "Prague Spring" complex in their hearts
Fifty years have passed since the "Prague Spring", through which we who live in the present can look at that historical event with a historical perspective. However, historical events have not disappeared. Those phenomena of political persecution, centralized rule, culture and even the suppression of people's voices are ubiquitous all over the world. It is probably the ubiquity of this phenomenon that makes the spirit of the "Prague Spring" Being able to spread all over the world, it always reminds every young man of us how important it is to pursue truth, democratic equality, and freedom of speech!
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