Complimentary: A Comparison of Kaufman's Flim and Kundera's Novel of Unbearable Lightness of Being

When a literary work is transformed into a film, the common question always arises of which is better: the book or the movie. Each medium has its own unique qualities: a film has a visually directed focus flashing images before our eyes while a novel delves into the mental aspects of a plot. Thus, the same work can be portrayed in two different mediums; often, they are comparable. The 1988 film and novel The Unbearable Lightness …

…and vice versa. As the audience, we find our own balance between what the movie presents and the novel informs, paralleling Tomas and Tereza as they find their own equilibrium of lightness and weight. As Kundera and Kaufman complement each other stories through their own respective works, we can't help but analyze lightness and weight in our own respective lives, and ultimately must decide where we will stand in the spectrum of light and weight.