Following Alain Resnais' stunning film "Night and Fog" (1956) about the Holocaust, he was commissioned to do a 45 min documentary on the atomic bomb. After a few months of reviewing existing Japanese documentaries on the subject (such as the work of Hideo Sekigawa: "Hiroshima" and "Children of Hiroshima"), Resnais quit the project, saying that a new documentary couldn't add anything to what has already been said and shown. That's when the producers floated the idea of hiring a screenwriter and turning the documentary into a feature length drama. Resnais accepted, and the result is far better than the sum of documentary + drama. "Hiroshima mon amour" is a powerful film on the subject of tragedy, the persistence of memory, and the hope--if there is any--of recovering from something so horrible that your mind does everything in its power to block it out.
The story follows 2 lovers, a nameless French woman and a nameless Japanese man, over the course of 24 hours. We open on them parting on the morning after their casual but passionate affair, and the film takes us through the day, evening and night to the following morning as they each wrestle with the inability to say goodbye because they realize they are hopelessly bound together by the same haunting demons. The man was a Japanese soldier who had returned to find his home incinerated, while the woman has her own wartime trauma to reckon with, something she refuses to confront at first but slowly reveals piece by piece to this strange man who is oddly the most kindred soul she has met in the 14 years since the war.
Although there's no real "action" here, the storytelling is suspenseful and gripping as the woman's story foams to the surface, and the man becomes a surrogate for the voice of her past, gently leading her deeper into her own suppressed memories with an almost hypnotic tone. It should be noted that the man (Eiji Okada whom you might recognize from the Brando flick "The Ugly American" or the Teshigahara masterpiece "Woman in the Dunes") didn't speak a word of French before filming, so his dialogue is wonderfully slow, careful and childlike. It reminded me of Ron Perlman's charming monosyllabic French in "City of Lost Children".
The woman is fantastically played by Emmanuelle Riva in her first (of many) starring roles. Her slowly evolving performance gives us one of the most realistic, most intimate portraits of a person who is repressing a painful secret, on the surface completely normal and happy-go-lucky but, as we soon realize, deeply tormented and empty inside.
Relating all of this back to the original intent of this "atom bomb documentary", it gives us a subject far more deeply personal than any historical recounting of facts and images. If we're paying attention, we realize that this nameless French woman's story is the story of every victim of war. More than that, it's the story of the human race struggling to recover from its own foolish penchant for self-destruction.
The story follows 2 lovers, a nameless French woman and a nameless Japanese man, over the course of 24 hours. We open on them parting on the morning after their casual but passionate affair, and the film takes us through the day, evening and night to the following morning as they each wrestle with the inability to say goodbye because they realize they are hopelessly bound together by the same haunting demons. The man was a Japanese soldier who had returned to find his home incinerated, while the woman has her own wartime trauma to reckon with, something she refuses to confront at first but slowly reveals piece by piece to this strange man who is oddly the most kindred soul she has met in the 14 years since the war.
Although there's no real "action" here, the storytelling is suspenseful and gripping as the woman's story foams to the surface, and the man becomes a surrogate for the voice of her past, gently leading her deeper into her own suppressed memories with an almost hypnotic tone. It should be noted that the man (Eiji Okada whom you might recognize from the Brando flick "The Ugly American" or the Teshigahara masterpiece "Woman in the Dunes") didn't speak a word of French before filming, so his dialogue is wonderfully slow, careful and childlike. It reminded me of Ron Perlman's charming monosyllabic French in "City of Lost Children".
The woman is fantastically played by Emmanuelle Riva in her first (of many) starring roles. Her slowly evolving performance gives us one of the most realistic, most intimate portraits of a person who is repressing a painful secret, on the surface completely normal and happy-go-lucky but, as we soon realize, deeply tormented and empty inside.
Relating all of this back to the original intent of this "atom bomb documentary", it gives us a subject far more deeply personal than any historical recounting of facts and images. If we're paying attention, we realize that this nameless French woman's story is the story of every victim of war. More than that, it's the story of the human race struggling to recover from its own foolish penchant for self-destruction.