Metrograph

Evoking the air of eager optimism that accompanied the Prague Spring thaw of 1968 and the air of disillusion and distrust that followed the Soviet crackdown in summer of the same year, Kaufman’s adaptation of Milan Kundera’s beloved novel, among other things a contemplation of the interrelation of sexual and political liberty, stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, and Lena Olin as, respectively, a womanizing brain surgeon-turned-dissident, his delicate wife, and his bohemian mistress. An achingly honest adult drama of the sort that American studios have almost entirely ceased to invest in and the product of an extraordinary confluence of talent in front of and behind the camera, with Academy Award–winning photography by Sven Nykvist and nimble cutting by Murch, who scoured the television news archives of Europe in order to bring the events of the Warsaw Pact invasion to vivid life onscreen.

Distributor: The Saul Zaentz Company