EDITION 07:

Hiroshima Mon Amour-Film Analysis

Rediscovering Classics

What you will find in this issue

1. Charlotte’s analysis of the movie

2. Lucie’s analysis of the set design

3. Link to our past posts

From Charlotte: a film analysis

Intro

Hiroshima Mon Amour is a 1959 film about war and romance, directed by Alain Resnais and scripted by Marguerite Duras, mostly set in the city of Hiroshima, where a French actress and an architect Japanese man have a relationship for the length of the shooting of a film about peace, which only takes place for 36 hours, fourteen years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We are not given any names, except for the ones they decide for each other; she is Nevers, he is Hiroshima. This acclaimed film was originally commissioned to be made as a documentary, but the director could not figure any way to depict the exactness of the devastated city, which is why he chose to portray it as a fiction, more precisely through a love story. He makes the viewer aware of that from the beginning of the film: “Impossible to talk about Hiroshima. All we can do is talk about the impossibility to talk about Hiroshima.”

Rediscovering Classics

This film contains multiple themes such as traumas, memories, oblivion and the anguish of time, peace, love as well as the notion that nothing really changes and that everything is bound to happen again.

The love story of that film works in parallel with the horror and devastation of what the Japanese population experienced after the bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, merging together to become one unity. The very title of the film can be understood as an oxymoron; joining two contradictory terms together to create a subtle correlation. The beginning of the film alternates between establishing shots of the city of Hiroshima and burnt bodies, as well as extreme close ups of two shining bodies that are not recognisable, consumed by love, blending them together through crossfade transitions. This parallelism between love and the city calls for the duality of universality and individualism, making juxtaposition a key element of the film. She embodies personal memory as we get a deep insight into her pain, grief and trauma, as well as a maybe more relatable experience for Europeans viewers regarding the learning of the catastrophes in Japan. She thinks she knows what really happened in Hiroshima because she listened to the radio everyday and is acting in a film about peace, denouncing a sort of white saviour complex. He represents collective memory as not much is revealed about him.

The French actress is in Japan in order to make a film about peace, however horror seems to surround them perpetually as they actively nourish it. He constantly asks her about her life in the small village she grew up, claiming that it is the only part of her life he is interested about, but she affirms that she would “never set foot in Nevers again”. By reminiscing her tragic love story with a German solider during a time of extreme violence with the Japanese man, she tries to relive this passion, that can only be retrieved in a similar context as he has an heritage of violence and horror, to get as close as what she felt then. At the very middle of the film, she talks to him as if he was the German solider and he plays along. She is terrified of the idea that she might forget about him. They only aim to discover each other through a prism of pain and-on different levels-shared traumas. Her deceased lover, that we get a glimpse of through flashbacks represents the past, her husband that is mentioned only a few times, but his presence reminded through her ring embodies the future as she will eventually have to go home to him again, and the architect personifies the present as we are witnesses of their time together. This correlates to the anguish of time; she tries to reminisce her old lover, she wants to stay in Hiroshima, he anticipates the time when he will eventually forget about her: “In a few years, when I’ll have forgotten about you, and other stories like those ones, by the force of habit, will happen again, I will remember you as the oblivion of love itself. I will think about that story as the horror of oblivion. I already know it”. Temporalities commingles; past, present and future all become indistinguishable, making the very concept of time and future harrowing. Watches and clocks are present through the whole film, reminding us of the constant disappointment and rush of having to find oneself somewhere. This metaphor is more than accurate for the context of the making of the film because of the nuclear threat, and is still today of a frightening relevance, calling for an inevitable repetition of similar events as she claims; “It will begin again. Two hundred thousand dead and eighty thousand wounded in nine seconds. Those are the official figures. It will begin again. It will be ten thousand degrees on the earth. Ten thousand suns, people will say. The asphalt will burn. Chaos will prevail. An entire city will be lifted off the ground, then fall back to earth in ashes”.

It is said that hair holds memories. The French actress’s hair is the incarnation of that sentence. In flashbacks, we see her with long hair in France with her lover, embodying innocence and youth. She then gets mowed as a public humiliation after the Liberation, echoing to the loss of that naivety, and in the time of the film her hair are mid-length. Everything is thus related; hair alluding to time passing, memory and healing process.

From Lucie: a set design study

Intro

This movie is a fabulous example of how effective set design can be at subtly enhancing a narrative and contradictions. In this week’s edition we will be looking at 7 different locations: the city of Hiroshima, the hospital, the hotel, “He”’s house, the river, “Her’’s bedroom in Nevers and the cellar, and how they add on another dimension to the story telling of Marguerite Duras. 

The Representation of Hiroshima, the Hospital and the Hotel

To start with, we can study how Hiroshima is presented to the viewer as a city stuck in the past. Constantly throughout the film, the city is shown as having two faces. Hiroshima during the war, enduring the horrible suffering its people have been through, and Hiroshima after the war. Both are constantly shown as clear opposites. During the flashbacks, it’s flooded with people, drowning under activity and chaos. When we jump back to reality, it all seems empty: the peace square, the streets, the market place. The only moments we see inhabitants and tourists are in areas directly linked to this horrific past, such as the museum, the nuclear bomb bus tour, and memorial sites. This is the introduction to this very famous psychological observation which is that, after a traumatic event, people’s lives stop, they feel disconnected to reality and only thinking back to this horrible moment makes them feel normal, it’s the last time they were alive. Doctor Bessel van der Kolk, a world renowned psychologist explores this very concept in his book titled The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. There, he explains how for example, Vietnam war veterans often keep on telling each other over and over again the tragic events that they lived through and caused them to suffer from PTSD as it is their only way of feeling alive. This seems relevant as the only moments where the city is shown being full of life is when we are shown the nightmarish flashbacks of the aftereffects of the bomb.  

To continue, we will look at how Alain Resnais was able to use the location of the hospital to demonstrate the limits of empathy. Indeed, this sequence seems to have been filmed to give the viewer some kind of first person point of view. Indeed, we first see it from the outside and then from the liminal spaces of the corridors, just as if we were really going through it. However right from the beginning there is an unsettling atmosphere. All the patients are looking at the camera from their doors, keeping at somewhat of a distance. Once the camera goes in a room, there is a breaking of the fourth wall as this lady almost lets us in looking directly at us. Yet, suddenly, all the rest of the patients now seem to ignore the camera. It almost feels as though it is an attempt of rebellion as they are not moving and refuse to entertain the viewer. Directly after that, we hear “He” say: “You didn’t see the hospital in Hiroshima” as we are sent back in time to the corridor, this time alone. This shows how, even if you thought you saw the reality, it’s actually impossible if you are not part of them, with the patients.

More examples of juxtapositions between the text and image are presented to us soon after. Indeed, one of the cut scenes shows images of newly planted trees, symbolising hope, new beginnings and regrowth. However, at this exact time the opposite message is said: “it will begin again, 200,000 dead, 80,000 injured in nine seconds”. In addition, the camera also turns to the ground of the city where one can see dirt, some plants and an empty packet of cigarettes with “peace” written on it. Even though that could be perceived as a hint of hope, it is actually showing the opposite. Here, peace has been thrown on the ground, like rubbish, without an afterthought. Couple that with “Her”’s sentence: “New vegetation will rise from the sands”, we see where the irony is, as nothing can grow from rubbish, from an old pack of cigarettes, from ashes. 

 Furthermore, we will look at how the location of the hotel is used as another example of the city’s inability to move on from its past. Indeed, firstly we can notice that its corridors are extremely similar to the ones of the hospital. Then, throughout the film it is constantly showcased as empty, only with the occasional staff member walking around. The irony here is that this hotel is called The New Hiroshima. This location which could directly hint at the city’s new modernisation, globalisation and attractiveness is only a witness to the failure of letting go of the city’s traumatic past.

Looking at “He”’s House, the River and Nevers

Through camera work and set design, the house of “He” gives us a closer look into the main characters' relationship. Indeed, we only see this house from three angles. The first one is the entrance door, which doesn’t reveal much about himself, followed by the wall on the left which is his library and finally from the bed. This tells us how they will only learn about each other in the same way, from a very small point of view and with very little perspective. So much more of their personality will forever remain unavailable to the other.

Then, we will look at the river as the only symbol of healing in the movie. Indeed, these three back to back shots respectively show an old man, a group of people (including some fishing) and a woman and her child. None of them are moving and they are all sitting down, looking at the body of water. The old man represents the past, the group of people the present and the woman with her child represents the future. The goal of this section is to explore the differences and similarities between the collective and individual experience. They all have their different lives, they are all at different places in the city, yet they are all doing the same thing, united in what they have been through. Here, the river is a symbol of purification, of the passage of time and the healing process.

Now, we will be taking a look at “Her”’s bedroom in Nevers and the cellar. The bedroom is used to show the extreme shift in her life that has just happened as well as the uncertainty of her past. Indeed, the shift is shown via the use of a single bed, marking the loss of her lover, and how she is now alone in life. In addition, the dolls, the toys, the wallpaper all just seem stuck in time, stuck with a version of herself which doesn’t exist anymore, unaligned with the loss of innocence now she has experienced death and pain. The closed blinds echo her clouded future, that neither the viewer or herself can project themselves now this has happened. 

Lastly, the cellar is used to represent the feeling of entrapment and dissociation often linked with trauma. For the majority of the scenes where we see “Her” in the cellar, she is stuck to the walls, grating them or licking them. There is a staircase leading to nothing, to a closed off window, representing her future attempts at going back to society. She will get so close that it looks like she is fine yet there will always be this little distance that only she can feel.

To conclude, we hope our analysis of this renowned film has helped you get some newer perspectives and sparked your curiosity! See you next week with our new posts on re-discovering classics.

Lucie & Charlotte

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