Movie: Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
Another example of a classic 'high-art' film that's far more accessible than its reputation suggests. It is also far more instinctive and risky than I expected. The romance between Emannuelle Riva and Eiji Okada (only credited as 'Her' and 'Him') is not treated as some sort of McGuffin for a pre-conceived fully fleshed out intellectualised treatise on the relationship between love, war and memory. Rather, the romance is the core of the film, and its philosophical considerations arise (mostly) organically from, and often take a backseat to, the romantic shenanigans of its two leads and Resnais' plauful stylisation. The fun he has weaving in and out of flashbacks and in-between current-day Hiroshima and war-time Nevers is palpable and makes for a very dynamic film that's constantly moving and probing around, seeking out thought-provoking situations, considerations and characterisations.
Late in the film, Riva and Okada go to a bar called Casablanca; a fun reference, as they are pretty much the opposite of Bogart and Bergman. For them, their love and potential obstacles in consuming it, amount to much more than a hill of beans. Resnais never lets his heroes think or consder anything that is not related to their romantic feelings, except in the stunning opening scene, when, in bed with her lover, Riva attempts to reflect on Hiroshima in the direct aftermath of the atomic bomb, while Okada keeps emphasising to her that as she wasn't there, she will never be able to understand the event or the city. During all this, close-ups of Him and Her in a naked embrace are interspersed with images of panicked, hurt, disformed and bewildered people trying and failing to make sense of their destroyed city and their lives. It is a mindblowingly provocative sequence signalling that this film is indeed going to be what its reputation suggests. But the bomb is barely mentioned afterwards and our two lovers spend the rest of their time discussling their personal feelings and romantic desires, without paying much mind to the event that has come to define Hiroshima.
Riva plays an actress who has come to Hiroshima for a movie about peace, arguing that "they make commercials about soap, why not about peace?" That line shows well some of the intentions behind Resnais' approach. When Okada comes to visit her on set, they are filming a large protest against nuclear proliferation with a lot of Japanese people holding protest signs written in French, and carrying enlarged shocking images of the bombing aftermath. Some extras seem to have large wounds and scars, but it's unclear if these are real or the result of great make-up aritsts. Nothing we see of the nuclear disaster is presented as something that is directly viewed by any of the characters. We see it through photographs, newsreel images, museum pieces and model reconstructions. And while in Riva's film Hiroshima is filled with anti-nuclear protestors, the bomb is not mentioned off-set. As Riva and Okada romantically stroll around, we see Hiroshima as a lively city with an active night scene where life goes on in tea houses, theaters, restaurants and hotels, without it being defined by the bomb. I find it hard to believe that this isn't a somewhat too optimistic representation of Hiroshima in 1959, but that only strengthens the idea of film being an inadequate and inauthentic representation of horror.
There is a line of thought in film criticism that argues that making films about the Holocaust is inherently immoral, whatever the intentions of these films may be. As I remember, some proponents of this idea are willing to make an exception for Resnais' documentary Night and Fog. I haven't seen it, but based on this film I understand where the thought could come from. In this context though, I can also imagine moral objections to Hiroshima Mon Amour - Wikipedia notes in fact that it was controversial and excluded from the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. The centerpiece of the film is a long semi-monologue by Riva remembering her youth in Nevers, when she fell in love with a German solider and was ostracized by her community for it. She was placed in solitary confinement only to be left out when France was liberated, just in time to see her Nazi lover being killed. For his part, Okada early on in the film mentions that he wasn't in Hiroshima when the bomb fell, because he was out fighting for his country. Neither Riva nor Okada is presented as having or supporting fascist ideas, but they can't exactly be called Nazi-resisters. They certainly have some regrets, but if these were real-life people it wouldn't be surprising to find them having some ugly thoughts when pressed. I found this ambigutiy the most surprising and striking aspect of the film.
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