What might explain it's acclaim is how it intuitively captures the post war psyche through the lens of its two main characters, Yukiko and Kengo. At the start of the film, we are shown footage of Japanese returning from the countries they occupied during the war and the destruction wreaked by the war in Japan. We find out that Yukiko and Kengo once had an affair in Indochina during the war, and as they kiss in present day, it cuts to a kiss back in Indochina where the lighting of the scene is bright in stark contrast to the more gloomy and subdued lighting in scenes shot in present day. The cut is made without any "transitionary device" eg fadeouts, thus actually predating Hiroshima mon amour by 4 years. Such an abrupt cut gives the impression of passions bubbling just beneath the surface, threatening to overwhelm with a mere suggestion. Hiroshima mon amour would of course take this idea much further, but we'll talk about that later on.
They keep telling themselves, things can't be the same after the war, we cannot live on memory, but somehow they keep colliding. First, Yukiko's hopes for a married life with Kengo are shattered when she discovers he isn't single afterall, then a second encounter sees her becoming more (rightfully) contemptuous, and so on and so forth. They move aimlessly throughout various stages of their lives, with their need and desire for each other hanging over every decision. The film makes use of architectural elements to suggest repetition and entrapment. Why is that the case? Why can't they move on? In Yukiko's case, she has been betrayed, used and manipulated, over and over again by men in her life. And yet, as she returns after the war, she finds that this world no longer has a place for her. She has to rely on the very same men and even a GI to survive. For Kengo, he goes home to find his wife sick, and his once successful business spiralling into bankruptcy.
Perhaps that golden period in Indochina is the only time when they felt free and alive. Their shared fall from grace continually drives them into each other's arms as they try to reignite old passions. For Kengo, we quickly see that beneath a thin veneer of stoicism, lies a frustrated and broken man, wracked with shame and guilt as he constantly chases the memory of a more "innocent" world through short lived and intense relationships with younger women. Masayuki Mori is a standout here, being able to modulate between his character's pathetic nature, cynicism, charm and desperation all at once. Hideko Takamine is great as always, as a character grappling with economic pressures, customs, dignity and crushing disappointment after crushing disappointment, leaving the memory of her love for Kengo as the only thing she can hold on to. It's no wonder that in rare moments of sobriety, they contemplate about suicide.
With no clear direction or even hope for the future, their lives turns into a cycle of self destructive behaviour, bookended at various points by the walks that these two have. What I find noteworthy is how the film frames these walks against a ever changing backdrop, not only emphasising the different contexts of their lives during each conversation, but also underpinning the confluence of personal and societal tribulations. As the country rebuilds, past mentalities often come into conflict with new values. Exacerbating the confusion was that many of these new values were introduced by the Americans, once enemies now turned conquerors/benefactors? Repatriated citizens and people at home didn't have time to reconcile with the loss of the war before being thrown into a rapidly changing world with unfamiliar political structure, social norms and economic realities.
While some attempt to forge new identities, others retreat into the past. It is this tension that forms the main dramatic force in the film. But did such a past ever exist? Recall that Yukiko's decision to go to Indochina was to escape her abuser, and Yukiko and Kengo's relationship in Indochina was a built on a lie. That brief flashback that we saw at the start of the film, for all its significance on the characters, is light on detail, suggesting that we may only have witnessed a select part of their affair. This brings me to the final part of the film. The couple decide to literally get as far away from Tokyo as possible without leaving Japan. Metaphorically, this is one final gesture to escape the present, to head back to the forests that saw the first blossoming of their love. As we have learned however, tragedy awaits those who cannot let go of an idealised past and thus it must also be here that they are finally, irreversibly lost to the past.
Its safe to say that Hiroshima Mon Amour is one of the most important films ever made, which can make approaching it seem intimidating. Certainly, having only had the opportunity to see it once, its very difficult to find the film buried beneath the mountain of accolades. The tone of the film doesn't help. Immediately from the start we have shots of two people tightly embraced, interspersed with reel footage of the devastation of Hiroshima. Along with the stately score, it makes its monumental subject matter very apparent. The impression that I got with the New Wave, from Godard's reputation in the 60s as well as watching Cleo from 5 to 7, is one of spontaneity, and lightness. Hiroshima mon Amour feels distant, rigorously constructed and decidedly grave. You get the sense that you too are sharing the weight of history as you watch this film.
Hence, it may not surprise that the film was borne of Resnais own feelings that film was inadequate in capturing the horrors of the atomic bomb. The film itself posits this; the French woman's claims of understanding Hiroshima through documents and photos in the museum are refuted by the Japanese man. Thus instead of trying to be an objective as possible account of the tragedy, the film leans into the subjectivity by viewing the tragedy through the lens of a French woman. We learn that she comes to Hiroshima to make a film about peace, but more importantly to her, she comes here to ease her trauma from back in Nevers. As far as I can tell, there are 2 main ideas presented in the film. The first, the relationship between the past and the present, memory and identity, told through the film's shattered temporality. No matter what she does, the past is always present in her mind; the mere sight of the Japanese man's hand reminds her of her dying lover. Later, when she recalls her experiences in Nevers, the lines between the past and the present blur as she starts to live out her memory in the present. In fact, the opening scene is so disorienting precisely because it denies us any spaciotemporal foothold, any narrative structure. The ashes on the intertwined bodies remind us of the bodies in Hiroshima, and later on the two cities, Nevers and Hiroshima, the past and present, become one.
Going into the text itself, we learn that the French woman fell in love with a German solider during their occupation of France, and she was ostracised for it, locked away in a dungeon until she came out of her "madness". In the last days of the war, they agreed to run away together, but the soldier was shot by a sniper. She stayed by his side for hours until his death. As she relays this to the Japanese lover, we realise that she is absolutely terrified, that a love that once burned so passionately would inevitably be dulled with time. Forgetting would mean losing her first love, and she feels she has already betrayed him by being in an affair with another. She is also afraid of forgetting her current Japanese lover, yet if they stay together, they might eventually forget what brought them together in the first place, such are the limitations of memory. Yet it is these limitations, these fears, that inform her present self. The past and the present cannot be separated. Even as they interact in the present, their memory of each other has already started to fade, and soon they will become another part of each other's trauma
The second idea is on the relationship between personal and collective memory. Are the two reconcilable? The film grapples with this question throughout. When the woman is narrating the bombing of Hiroshima, she mentions dates, figures and uses reel footage. She does not experience Hiroshima, only its aftermath. When she is narrating her own past, such things become immaterial, and her emotions are brought to the forefront. However, by placing her personal trauma into its historical context, by attempting to identify with other war survivors, she is finally able to speak about her own trauma. She is able to to connect with another survivor through their shared grief. Their differing nationalities are rendered meaningless over universality and timelessness of wartime trauma. In fact, when she was in Paris, she identified more with the pain of the people of Hiroshima than the happiness of her fellow countrymen celebrating the end of the war. So it seems that the collective experience is at once translatable and untranslatable into the personal. What about vice versa? Contrast the recollection and the involuntary memory of her lover's outstretched arm. The latter is more visceral because its not incorporated into chronological flow. When she tells her story, something so intensely personal is rendered banal by the attempt to represent it in narrative form for someone else. And yet it is because he is able to share in the woman's personal experience that the Japanese man is able to come to terms with his own trauma. Eventually, both acknowledge that their personal memories will become inextricably tied to places of collective memory.
Collective memory, often represented by secondary sources of information, can be easily dulled. It is subject to the forces of time and nature, which dictate that all things gradually become less and less significant. As more of the people who experienced wartime trauma personally die out, their experiences become just another number, photograph or newspaper clipping in a museum. Yet by proposing that the trauma of Hiroshima is unrepresentable, by privileging subjective experience to explore wartime trauma as a whole, the film risks obfuscating the the specificity of Hiroshima. They imply that traumatic events will always lie outside the domains of language, discourse and history. But taken to its logical conclusion, this way of thinking about historical trauma subsumes all political and historical factors; the atomic bomb is quantified only by the amount of human suffering that it causes, and thus becomes no different from other tragic events in history.
I think this is symptomatic of the tendency of filmmakers to unconsciously subjugate another country's reality in favour of their own. The film's impulse to universalise Hiroshima reflects a western tendency to de-politicise the non west. The framing of Hiroshima within the French woman's repressed wartime memories certainly does not help. One of the key tenets of western (American) identity is being the torchbearer of freedom and democracy (read: civilisation) after all. I would argue that the West often does not see Asia so much as it sees a projection of its achievements and ideology, which has its roots in Orientalism. But I digress. But its not just the west that does this, I recall Ann Hui's Boat People implicitly drawing parallels between communist Vietnam and Hong Kong's handover anxieties. However. I struggle more with Hiroshima mon amour, because it clearly acknowledges this and is a more complex film with many more ideas.
In fact, I've struggled with this film as a whole. It often feels like I'm missing so much more, and of what I get it feels like I dont fully understand it, probably because of its utter lack of resolution to any of the ideas presented. Notice I've not mentioned any part of the dialogue at all? Its because most of it flew over my head. Ditto for much of the psychology, emotions and politics in the film. This is a film that requires a second and third viewing. For now though, I will say that these two films present many similarities and contrasts on the ramifications of wartime trauma, and together with all the research I've done for this post, it has been an eye opening learning experience about the aftermath of war
Reading this several month removed, good lord I need to rewrite the Hiroshima mon amour review.
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