Hiroshima Mon Amour
The Criterion Collection, $39.95
As the title suggests, Hiroshima Mon Amour marries the institutions of love and war from the outset, a haunting opening shot of intertwined human limbs gently caressing one another amid a delicate snowfall of ash. Acclaimed French documentarian Alain Resnais made his first exploration into the world of narrative in 1959 with this ambiguous masterpiece about a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) who engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima. During the course of the following day and night, the lovers reminisce on past affairs as they wander through the reconstructed city. Through the use of flashback — a little used style of storytelling at the time — and an Academy Award-nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima Mon Amour has a rich power buried in its subtext. What that subtext might be exactly, as Resnais mentions in one of the fascinating interviews included in this disc’s special features, is “left up to the individual viewer.” These conclusions are a common theme in the era of French New Wave cinema, frustratingly complex on their surface yet wonderfully original and accessible at their core. Foraging such a style, this film does exactly what great art is supposed to do: It makes you think long after the final frame. Hiroshima Mon Amour presents the undeniable force of love in all its magnificent, brutal glory by interweaving scenes of physical and emotional destruction. The time spent in the present between the two lovers — when they are not reminiscing about their pasts — seems so sterile, even painful, that the recovery of lost love has hit their psyche like a nuclear bomb. And such a film about the darker side of love, much like the darker side of war, should not be ignored.
This article appears in September 5 • 2003.