"The imbecility of commercial interests and the implacability of ideological dogma are two evils that threaten the art of film. When Czech cinema was nationalised immediately after the war, it freed itself from the power of the first evil, and during the 1960s it slowly shed the second. In that brief moment of freedom (a relative freedom, but so rare on our planet) a great plethora of young Czech filmmakers were born. I liked them all (they were my friends, my classmates, later even my pupils), but for his humour, for his spirit of demystification, Miloš Forman was always the closest to me."
"Do I like the filmed The Unbearable Lightness of Being? It's not my film by any means. It may not have been bad, but it was alien to me; for example, its eroticism: the pitiful monotony of cinematic orgasms. These days, one can see in Paris a film that, after twenty-two years, has been allowed to leave the vault of totalitarian censorship: Jireš's The Joke. There is only one erotic scene: the intercourse between Louis and Helena. It is a small miracle of density: the crossroads at which all the conflicts of the story intersect, at which the history of the country is concentrated. The coitus also ends in an orgasm, but we don't see two naked bodies laboriously trying to make funny noises; we see the deceived husband singing and raising his hand in rapture. Jireš is a master of montage, and I consider his Joke to be my own. By which I mean that everything the director has brought to my novel I like. That I am thrilled with it."
Milan Kundera
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