Snap Judgments

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A brilliant reissue of a 1988 gem

Jonathan Kiefer

Does anyone still harbor the notion that Milan Kundera's erotic, philosophical 1984 novel was unfilmable? For starters, as San Francisco-based director Philip Kaufman rightly observed, "What could be more visual than Juliette Binoche's face?" And of course there was editor Walter Murch's brilliantly cinematic assemblage of real footage from the military halt to Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring, decribed by Kaufman as a "variant of what we had here in San Francisco called the Summer of Love...[though] the Russians really didn't see it that way." A film about lovemaking as subversion of totalitarian oppression, this 1988 treasure, gorgeously photographed by the peerless Sven Nykvist, shows Kaufman in top form and working with top talent—particularly Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Lena Olin. This special release on two discs (to maximize resolution) includes an affable new making-of featurette, but any reissue is reason enough to watch the film again. A+

Inside In the Know

IT List

POLITICS

What’s Hounding San Francisco

Never mind police scandals, run-down schools, and a huge budget deficit. The issue that has the whole city yapping is whether or not Rex can run off-leash.

CULTURE

The L Weird

According to many women, the lesbian moment in the Bay Area has heteros acting very odd.

METROPOLUST

Just doing it

Complicated intimacy with women and men was nothing new to Anna. But when your sex buddy changes gender, the rules change, too.

BUSINESS

I, Pod

The Apple iTunes revolution, or, the anatomy of a sales job.

SOCIALIST

A Tale of Two Parties

A couple of bashes go head-to-head in bringing out the town’s socialistas. The surprise? This town’s actually big enough for both.

THE PROFILE

The believer behind bars

A time traveler from the incorrigible '60s, the brilliant criminal defense lawyer Tony Serra has been conducting his antiauthority career as if nothing has changed in the last 40 years. With Serra stuck in prison, BURR SNIDER assesses the legal legend's stubborn (but principled) resistance to convention and wonders: is Serra an anachronism or is his mistrust of government power more relevant than ever?