Review of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) by Karlo M — 14 Jul 2008

Hiroshima mon Amour is a journey into the past and memories of lost love. A Young French actress Elle (Emmanuelle Riva) is shooting a peace movie in Hiroshima, there she meet's a Japanese man Lui (Eiji Okada) with home she spends the night, they each come to share a deep passion with one another and Lui falls in love with her. Elle also starts to share a connection with Lui as he reminds her of her lost love in her home town Nevers in France.

The movie opens with different shots of Japanese victims right after the Hiroshima bombing and the side effects this has caused, turning these unfortunate victims into cripples. During these clips we hear the voice over of Elle and Lui, Elle's voice is sad but steady as she talks about these horrible misdeeds that has been happening to these poor people and how the bombing of Hiroshima had effected everyone, she talk like she was there when it happened, almost like she's seen and touched these people, Lui's voice over is constantly interrupting her saying "you saw nothing in Hiroshima", which is true, she wasn't there, yet how could her words be so true? This is a question I would like to deal with later.

These first 10 minutes of Hiroshima mon Amour are almost a documentary about the victims of Hiroshima, the way these 10 minutes come to life some how reminded me of Terrence Malick. The way Resnais shoots the different landscapes combined with the horror of Hiroshima, shots of the tortured Japanese people and mixed in with the almost poetic like voice-over from Elle and Lui and Georges Delerue's beautiful music. Almost excatly like Terrence Malick did it with The Thin Red Line, and it struck me how influenced Malick must have been by Resnais, and it has deffinetely peaked my interest in watching more Resnais, seeing how big a fan I am of Malick's work.

One should think that the real tragedy of the story is about Horishima, but actually it's not, the real tragedy comes from Elle's past and her story of her first lover, a german soldier in her hometown Nevers, who was shot dead, and how she was disowned by her family and the towns people for having an affair with the enemy, and almost loosing her mind in sorrow. Her story is so tragically told through words and imagery, that it growns a strong feeling of helplessness that this poor girl has gone through, her pain is so realistically portrayed and how this pain has been easting away inside of Elle for so many years, only now coming to the surface as she tells her story to Lui. As the story goes along, Elle knows her time I Hiroshima is about to come to an end, and that she must leave Lui, Lui whom she has grown so close to, so close that only he has been shared her life story, for 14 years he's the only one who knows been getting to know her true identity, which is also revealed at the very end of the movie. As she tells him "Hi-ro-shi-ma. Hiroshima. That is your name." and he replies in return Yes, that is my name. Your name is Ne-vers. Nevers in France. In this moments they are each givin eachother an identity, which brings me back to the question I asked earlier: If Lui keeps saying you saw nothing in Hiroshima", then how come her words sounds so true? They do because she has shared her identity with Lui and Lui has shared her identity with her, they have shared eachothers pain, almost becoming eachother.

If Elle and Lui has created such a strong bond with eachother, then why doesn't she just stay with him in Horishima? Elle is simply afraid of falling in love again, she afraid of her past, and she's afraid she'll come to lose everything once again and then completely lose her mind like she almost did before.

Hiroshima mon Amour is a very unique movie and it's awe-inspiring to think this was Resnais' first feature length movie, truely a piece of art filled with emotion.