Looking at 'Hiroshima, Mon Amour'

Wednesday 10th February 2021

Today is Wednesday, a day when I don't usually post but since my tutor sent me the feedback late last night I only read it today and since I have a lot of other work I want to be getting to, I decided to do this blogpost today and now. The reason I don't usually post on Wednesdays is because firstly, I have work(as in job) on this day and secondly, the work(school) I do is not enough to post about. I have to do the evaluation and before I still need to record the stuff that goes in the first half of my video but I have a problem with my throat so we'll see how that goes. I may have to get someone else to record it for me.

In my one to one tutorial feedback from my tutor they suggested for me to look at this website and choose one of the films to look at.

https://imagejournal.org/top-25-films-on-memory/

I chose to look at Hiroshima, Mon Amour because I found the initial picture interesting. The little synopsis that the website gave is below.

"Haunted by memories of World War II, specifically the Hiroshima bombings, a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) also dwell upon the memories of their now ended affair. Director Alain Resnais repeatedly cuts to the same scenes, ingrained in both their memories, but their very different perspectives lead to disagreements as their memories shape the way they interact and view the world. The tension continually and gradually crescendos until the quietly haunting finale, when they both confront the one memory at the heart of their troubles."

Hiroshima, Mon Amour is a 1959 Nouvelle Vague romantic drama film directed by Alain Resnais. I remember when I was learning French that I learnt about the Nouvelle Vague, "a French art film movement which emerged in the late 1950s characterised by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favour of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm."

From what I have read about this film I think it really encompasses that idea, especially with that memory. I read more into in from this article by Senses of Cinema.

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/hiroshima-mon-amour/

It says a lot about not only the film but also the director. I am not going to watching the film but reading the SparkNotes is probably enough.

The article says a lot and a lot and a lot so I won't quote everything but I will take just a few bits of information that I think is important to the idea of memento and then I will explore and think about the director's vision because I think that is the way I should be doing research.

"Telling their story is a way to keep him alive, while she is also aware that every step she takes into the future is a step further from her past. He tells her, encapsulating the whole film: “I shall remember you as love itself forgotten. I know now that I shall think of this story as of the horror of forgetting.” But She feels that in telling her story she has already forgotten the German man. The telling, the remembering, as essential as they are, feels like a betrayal. Memories fade, people forget, people are forgotten. There is a melancholy inevitability to this. But to embrace the future, perhaps the past must be forsaken. Resnais, by the film’s moving finale, has not definitively resolved this dilemma and yet we are left with a feeling of the “anguish of the future. Resnais presents time in a circular fashion – past, present and future looping into each other. He achieves this through repeated dialogue and a wholly innovative film aesthetic."

I think this is the most important thing to think about and consider in relation to losing and finding, forgetting and remembering and the memento project. I wanted to really focus on the memory element in the film and so I read the following article.

https://nanocrit.com/issues/issue6/memory-identity-emotive-map-alain-resnais-hiroshima-mon-amour

It was really interesting to read and the conclusion was this :

"Hiroshima Mon Amour thus ends on a positive note, as by apparently identifying with their respective nations, the protagonists appear to have symbolically made peace with the past. By engaging in a mutual healing process through which traumatic events are openly addressed and reflected upon, these individuals have ultimately grown stronger and also closer to their own nations. It is such individual strength and re-identification with one’s homeland—something which Bruno interprets as a “psychogeographic” space—that can foster peace (in Japan and the city of Hiroshima in the case analysed) and stimulate rewarding international interaction and collaboration rather than destruction and subsequent alienation between people—and between citizens and their urban habitat."

I searched a lot but could not find exactly what I wanted to find. And I didn't really input my ideas in this but still reading about it and trying to understand the ideas and themes was still very effect. Looking at this film gave me examples of techniques that could have been used in my film, but we sort of had different ideas so I'm not sure whether I would have implemented these things had I researched this sooner. It also made me think more about the war and memories. I know that in Japan they have a culture where they would rather not talk about controversial things like politics and such, so a lot of what the film brings up makes sense, “planes with atomic bombs were circling the earth all the time but everyone seemed oblivious.” I think that in many countries there is something that people don't like to bring up or talk about or they like to just ignore things and pretend they are not happening but by doing that we are not solving anything, we are usually making things worse. Although it may feel like a "betrayal" to talk about it, it is the only way (that I can think of) that we can make "peace with the past". This concept is similar to what I wanted to explore and talk about in my film. I mentioned it a little but it wasn't really prominent and my film is just 2 minutes long. Given more time though, I doubt that I would have made it much better.

I also looked at the New Wave Film website and saw the review of the film. I think it was even more interesting and it is something I am glad I read. One thing to take away from the article is this:

"Now considered a landmark in post-war cinema, a modernist masterpiece that presaged much of what was to come, Hiroshima mon amour still defies easy analysis. Is it about a love affair? Or is it about the French woman’s buried past? Or is it about two places where tragedy occurred? The fact that the film raises more questions than answers goes someway to explain its enduring resonance. At its heart the film asks the question: Is it better to try to forget tragedy or to remember?"

And I guess that is a question that still hasn't been answered.