Word: czechs
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...Unbearable Lightness of Being, directed by Phil Kaufman (The Right Stuff), from Czech Author Milan Kundera's 1984 novel, marks a defiant step backward toward movie maturity. It is about life and death, love and responsibility, private morality and power politics. It rekindles the sparks of adult sexuality on the American screen. And in its capacious reach, the picture means to embrace three decades of European films. For 2 hours 47 minutes, it dances from the skeptical eroticism of mid-'60s Czech films to the leaden sentimentality of French Director Claude Lelouch. At its best, it recalls the anguished intensity...
...Gorbachev getting restless with provincial posts? Perhaps. Mlynar, who was rising toward the top levels of the Czech Communist Party, visited his old classmate in 1967 and recalls that Gorbachev complained about excessive interference by Moscow in local affairs. Mlynar described the sweeping reforms that Alexander Dubcek was then beginning in Czechoslovakia. He remembers Gorbachev saying, with a sigh, "Perhaps there are possibilities in Czechoslovakia because conditions are different." The Czech reforms, however, were crushed by Soviet tanks the following year, and Mlynar went into exile; he now lives in Austria. The two old friends talked and drank through that...
Another twist in the story is that both actresses are Czechs transplanted in America. Anna was a beloved Czech film star until the Russian invasion of 1968, which took her film-director husband, her child, her freedom and ultimately her citizenship away. She washed ashore in New York, gradually losing her youth and her name recognition as an actress...
Anna's tragedy is that she could conceivably return to communist Prague, recant her politics, and become a star again, rather than remain in America and demean herself by jumping at understudy roles in silly, pretentious Broadway shows. As she tells her former acting professor, a Czech who has sold out his politics to regain his status, "My problem is I love America too much." He answers, "But America doesn't love you, and it never will." She replies, "But it leaves me alone...
America does love the beautiful Krystyna, too much to leave her alone. Even when she first arrives, a thin, gawky teen with bad teeth, who speaks no English, almost immediately a hot-shot director "discovers" her; he can't take his eyes off her. Anna takes in this poor Czech waif, who has sought her out after growing up admiring her on the screen, and within a year, Krystyna has learned English, had her teeth fixed (for free, by an amorous dentist), and landed the lead in a Hollywood movie. She remains pure and ingenuous, living a charmed life...