The unbearable lightness of being

Title: The Unbea­ra­ble Light­ness of Being
Direc­tor: Phi­lip Kauf­man
Review: A mag­ni­fi­cent and epic tale of love, being in love and how to stay in love. Set in Pra­gue during the era of the Soviet inva­sion, this tale puts an inno­cent and quirky young woman with a char­ming sex acti­vist and sees them through free­dom, marriage, inva­sion, aban­don­ment and Rus­sian dic­ta­torship; always lon­ging to change, to be happy and loved alone. Really an ama­zing movie with fine acting from all invol­ved, par­ti­cu­larly Juliette Binoche who is so beau­ti­ful and Daniel Day-Lewis who carries an air about him­self. 8/10 and a must see.

I and my neigh­bor have been ran­domly pic­king out movies from my collec­tion and watching them. It’s odd that this film should echo a phrase I heard only once before a few days prior thanks to the Shi­ning album: “In the king­dom of kitsch you will be a mons­ter”. When the film finished I deci­ded to read up about this phrase to find it’s ori­gins. Sur­pri­singly neither goo­gle or ans​wers​.com had any infor­ma­tion about the par­ti­cu­lar phrase, but I did find some inte­res­ting infor­ma­tion about the word “kitsch”. Quo­ting wikipedia:

“Kitsch is a term that has been used to cate­go­rize art that is con­si­de­red an infe­rior copy of an exis­ting style. The term is also used more loo­sely in refe­rring to any art that it is pre­ten­tious or in bad taste, and also com­mer­cially pro­du­ced items that are con­si­de­red trite or crass.

Because the word was brought into use as a res­ponse to a large amount of art in the 19th cen­tury where the aesthe­tic of art work was con­fu­sed with a sense of exag­ge­ra­ted sen­ti­men­ta­lity or melo­drama, kitsch most clo­sely asso­cia­ted with art that is sen­ti­men­tal, maw­kish, or maud­lin; howe­ver, it can be used to refer to any type of art which is defi­cient for simi­lar rea­sons whether it tries to appear sen­ti­men­tal, cool, gla­mo­rous, thea­tri­cal, or crea­tive, kitsch is said to be a ges­ture imi­ta­tive of the super­fi­cial appea­ran­ces of art. It is often said that kitsch relies on merely repea­ting con­ven­tion and for­mula, lac­king the sense of crea­ti­vity and ori­gi­na­lity dis­pla­yed in genuine art.”

It also men­tio­ned that the world of pop cul­ture is essen­tially enti­rely “kitsch”, all com­mer­cially pro­du­ced music, movies and art falling under this cate­gory. My inter­pre­ta­tion of the ori­gi­nal phrase “In the king­dom of Kitsch you will be a mons­ter” is that the king­dom is essen­tially pop cul­ture or pre­ten­tious art and the object of the phrase appears ‘mons­ter’ like to those who live within the Kitsch realms. i.e. To someone that enjoys the sim­pli­fied “kitsch-art”, true art would seem like a disas­trous horri­ble mon­tro­sity. Much like trying to intro­duce a fan of Will Smith to the poig­nant work of foreign lan­guage indie cinema. Also; “The term “kitsch” was selec­ted in June 2004 by a Bri­tish trans­la­tion com­pany as one of the ten English words that are har­dest to trans­late.”. My new favou­rite word.