Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

What makes it different from others?

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Elle is a French actress on location in Hiroshima, where she meets Lui, a Japanese architect. She is married with children, and he is married too, but they have sex anyway, because they both cheat on their spouses on a regular basis. After a single night, they fall madly in love with each other, convinced that the sex they had was deep and meaningful, so deep and meaningful, in fact, that when they cheat on their respective spouses with other paramours in the future, as they have every intention of so doing, they think that it will never be as good as what they have with each other right now. Of course, if they were free to marry each other, they would probably be cheating on each other in a couple years too, but that either does not seem to occur to them, or it occurs to them, but they don't care, because they are the kind of people who think they are entitled to cheat.Although the movie is set in Hiroshima, where reference is naturally made to the atom bomb, this proves to be nothing more than a way of providing an excuse for Elle to talk about what she was doing in France when the bomb went off. From there she eventually tells about how she loved a German soldier, who was killed by a sniper, and how she was ostracized for having sex with him, causing her to have a nervous breakdown. She thinks that German soldier was the great love of her life, but given the kind of woman she is, we know that she would have been cheating on him in no time.Since the movie is set in Hiroshima, and since Lui is a Japanese citizen, you might think Elle's story about how she suffered so much during the war would be matched by a story from Lui about his experience during that period. Nope. All we get is that he was in the army. Well, after all, this is a French movie and not a Japanese movie, so it is only the French experience that the movie deems worthy of consideration.

As a college freshman some 45 years ago, I saw this film in the student union They had a commitment to art films. I have to say that I do remember the stream of dialog between the two characters but little about the content. I knew he (the Japanese man) had lost his family on that August day. I recall her pulling inward as he becomes a bit demanding. Watching it with mature eyes and a fresh view of the world, I was brought back to these two traumatized characters and the war that changed them forever. It begins with a discussion of the Hiroshima museum which contains pictures and artifacts from that fateful day. He keeps telling her that she has not seen Hiroshima as they lay entwined in bed. His pain is more predictable. He lost his family that day while he was away. Hers takes a more melancholy road. As she opens up, she tells the story of a love affair with a German soldier whom she would meet in all manner of places. One day she found him dying, curled up on the ground. She sits with him until he dies. New of their trysts gets out and she is ostracized by her community, her hair cropped, beaten, and thrown in a cellar by her own family. She has not told this story to anyone, including her own husband, until now. While she feels somewhat liberated the pain is too deep. The Japanese man, also married, wants her to stay in Hiroshima. The movie is about the relationship going forward with such damaged people. She repeatedly tries to escape him, but he keeps resurfacing. The sad thing is that she desires him and so it's not as if she is being stalked. Resnais is a master with the camera, using black and white contrasting images, engaging flashbacks, close-ups. One really marvelous scene is where the young woman, who has been playing a small part in an anti-war film, is nearly trampled by protesters carrying signs. Hiroshima is constantly in her face. She has been hurt so badly by the war and is carrying a load of guilt. War carries with it a loss of innocence and pain beyond the obvious. This film really captures this.

Before starting to write about my thoughts on the film, I need to say that Akira Kurosawa's one of the masterpieces, Rhapsody in August and Wong Kar Wai's masterpiece In The Mood for Love are two of my all time favorite movies. Hiroshima Mon Amour is similar with those movies in terms of theme and style both, but it cannot be as touching and impressive as those movies. Resnais overly uses voice over technique in this movie and after a while it becomes almost unbearable, because poetic structure surpasses realism. It is like the movie is built on memoirs, so you feel like the characters aren't there really. The movie is not only a love story, but also it tries to be an elegy for the tragedy, Hiroshima Nagasaki, however, the movie can't handle all these themes including the woman's past as the third story. So what is the movie about? A forbidden love story? A woman's past tragedies? An elegy for Hiroshima Nagazaki? or all? The film could be poetic, romantic, but it is not that subtle or deep or beautiful in my opinion. On Hiroshima Nagazaki, Rhapsody was much better. On love, Fa Yeung Nin Wa was much better. As for the actor, the actress and overall acting, I didn't know the male lead, also I didn't know that the female lead is Amour's great Emmanuelle Riva at that time, however, unfortunately I have to say that Riva'a acting in this movie was weak and the man was not better than her. It is interesting that Riva reminded me Monica Vitti, the most beautiful European actress ever along with Claudia Cardinale for me, but the funny thing is that I don't adore Mrs. Vitti's acting either. By the way, I believe that this movie is mostly for women, women's favorite movie, it rather affects women like Jodie Foster's The Brave One (as I know, some female audiences cheered up in the finale of that movie) Also, I couldn't empathize with the woman, I couldn't feel her, I couldn't empathize with the man either, probably the dead pan story telling. I couldn't feel the passion in the love story, in fact I couldn't see love in this film, in contrast I found it uninspired. The ceremony scene in the middle of the movie was memorable, it reminded me Rhapsody again and other than this, the only scene I found interesting and memorable was two walk separately in empty streets, neon lights on the buildings... I would want to learn more about the relationship of the couple, I would want to get to know them more. This is not a relationship movie, my big disappointment was partially because of this, I had expected a different, touching and deep relationship movie, but it was not. The movie doesn't focus on a certain theme and I couldn't decide whether the woman'a past was necessary or not? Because it changes everything. The love story isn't pretentious may be as the hype claims, but it is vapid and dull for sure (not like Fa Yeung Nin Wa) I am not a cinema historian, I am not a professional critic who feels obliged to be objective or I am not an audience who only considers technical aspects and cinematic breakthroughs and personally I look for emotion in movies and despite this film is considered to be one of the most romantic and poetic movies of all time, I couldn't find it.

This movie is boring. Marguerite Duras sucks. I've been in love and gotten freaky with lovers and it was not like this. It was a lot more interesting than this. Want to make a Hiroshima movie? Make a movie about the dude with the burned-off lips. Show a day in this guy's life. The woman played by Emmanuelle Riva is unbearable. The Japanese dude is happy he got a piece of Western tail. The whole thing feels like the fantasy of a hysterical, frigid woman. My life is sad. I have an incurable disease. I am depressed and when I go to the movies I want to see Life. I wanted to burn something after seeing this film. I am a man and when I see this kind of self-indulgent feminine sterility on screen it drives me crazy, just as I imagine it drives women crazy to see the male equivalent...stuff like Armageddon or whatever. There was a pretty girl in the theater and I would have liked for her to think I was poetic and sensitive but after an hour of "poetic" dialogue I walked out. The babe probably thought less of me. I don't need her anyway. Who am I kidding? Of course I need her.