Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour was released in 1959, 14 years after the devastating nuclear attack on the Japanese city Hiroshima in 1945. Upon its release, the film received a lot of attention from critics and the public alike. It received an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, as well as the Fipresci International Critics' Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959. It was not included in the official selection of the famed film festival that year, so as to not upset the U.S government and offend American sentiments. Ironically, this feigned ignorance of the past to avoid accountability is one of the critiques faced by this film. The film takes place in the city of Hiroshima - site of one of the world’s biggest tragedies, and yet the main focus of the movie is a single conversation between strangers about their personal lives. Resnais was originally approached to make a documentary film about the atomic bomb, no doubt after his successful 1956 documentary on the Holocaust – Night and Fog. Unable to come up with a way to depict the event, Resnais brought Marguerite Duras onboard to write the screenplay, leading to the movie as it is today. One of the popular critiques against this film is that it is disrespectful to such a catastrophic event, and inadequately captures the true horror of it all. However, it is the juxtaposition of the protagonist’s personal tragedy against that of Hiroshima’s that shows us the true extent and reach of one event.
At the beginning of the film, we see one of the most iconic openings in cinema history. We see a closeup of a couple, arms embracing each other. Ash falls onto their bodies and around them, reminding us of the bodies just like the couple that are now buried under the deadly atomic rubble of the bomb. The image dissolves into the image of another couple in an intimate embrace, this time covered in beads of sweat. Voices can be heard in the background throughout – one of a woman’s and one of a man’s. We do not know to whom the voices belong, or who the the people in the shots are. It is entirely ambiguous – they could be anybody. This ambiguity distances the figures from identification, further driving in the themes of destruction and love as a constant in the world. Elements of humanity that survived the bombing of Hiroshima, and continue to exist in the present. In this way Resnais brilliantly ties in the tragedy of Hiroshima with the personal tragedies faced by the protagonists.
Resnais employs the use of documentary footage from a museum (originally intended for use in the planned documentary) – burned bodies, emaciated children, deformed metal from the aftermath – as Emmanuelle Riva says to her lover (played by Eiji Okada) “I saw them.” His response is powerful – “You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.” It is true, Riva has not seen the true impact of the bomb, and can perhaps never comprehend the true gravity of the event. Yet, the consequences of the bomb being dropped – thus ending the war – had immense repercussions for her. In a way she too has felt the sting of the aftermath of the bomb. Not only is Okada rejecting Riva’s statement of having understood what happened in Hiroshima, but he is also rejecting the narrative created by the museum. Simply displaying physical evidence and documentation of the bomb is not enough to truly understand what happened. Riva appropriates the sorrow faced by the nation of Japan, and attempts to understand it within the context of her own life. However, she appropriates an entire nation’s tragedy in the process.
Resnais chooses to keep the city of Hiroshima as a backdrop to the movie, and chooses to transport the characters and audience to the French city of Nevers, through Riva’s recounting of her past. While the film has been criticised for this, the decision to do so takes the viewer away from the historical aspect of the bombing and introduces a sort of personal form of suffering. The factual aftermath of Hiroshima is known worldwide, but the tales of individuals affected by the bombing go largely unnoticed. Resnais is not commenting on France or Japan’s roles in the war, but is simply telling the story of a woman affected by the bombing miles away in France, while she is in the very city it occurred in. In a world where everyone is eager to forget the horrors of what occurred in Hiroshima, Riva is encouraged to remember her traumatic experience that she is desperate to forget. France as a country has been notorious for forgetting its past and its role in the war. Riva too, would like to move ahead in life while forgetting her dead lover from the past. When asked by Okada what the bombing of Hiroshima meant to Riva, she responded that it was “all over the newspapers.” To a Frenchwoman, the bombing was simply the act that ended the war – almost a cause for celebration. The whole world’s understanding of the bombing was through the pictures of the mushroom clouds taken from far above the scene. It was a detached perception of reality. Riva experienced the bombing in a detached manner as well, but also directly experiences the aftermath with the death of her lover. Okada may think she doesn’t have an understanding of the bombings, but in a sense she truly experiences some form of impact from it. Just as Okada lost his family members in the bombing, Riva too loses her lover as a consequence of the bomb being dropped.
In the film, Hiroshima is represented as a land of peace, while Nevers represents the horrors of war. Instead of focusing on the known tragedy of Hiroshima, Resnais tells the audience the story of the overlooked tragedy that occurred in Nevers. Okada – whose family died in the bombing – seems to have moved on from his past. Riva’s character, however, is stuck in the throes of remembering her tragic past. Okada senses this and encourages her to tell him the story of her past, and what the bombing at Hiroshima meant for her. As she remembers, they both become immersed in the story. Riva transitions from third person speech to second person speech – referring to Okada as “you” while talking about her dead German lover. Okada in turn, mirrors this change and asks questions about the lover in first person, referring to him as “me”.
While narrating her story, Riva and Okada’s roles transform. Okada is the architect who is part of rebuilding Hiroshima – now he is reconstructing Nevers. Riva was in Hiroshima to re-enact the tragedy – now she is acting out the tragedy that occurred in Nevers. Towards the end of the film, the cities of Hiroshima and Nevers blend into one another. The two vastly different cities have been enjoined by the deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of their respective tragedies. Okada and Riva refer to each other as “Hirsohima” and “Nevers”, becoming one with the cities and surrendering their individual identities in the process. This transformation ascends from the temporal plane and transports the audience to a higher level of understanding the true impact of the Hiroshima bombing, and how far its reach truly is.
Alain Resnais creates a flux in time by drawing the audience and Okada into the psychological space of Riva. He uses devices such as flashbacks to create a bridge between memory of the past and existence in the present. He also cuts between scenes of Hiroshima and Nevers, as well as elements from Riva’s memory. She gazes as Okada’s hand as he sleeps, remembering the hand of her lover – which is shown on screen. Visually, Resnais has created a universe in which Hiroshima and Nevers might as well be one and the same, with artistic editing and cinematographical choices.
The key to forgetting trauma in Hiroshima mon amour is to remember. It is only through remembering her German lover that Riva is able to ease the pain of his loss. This can be said for the bombing of Hiroshima as well. For decades now the narrative of the atomic bombs has been warped. The world knows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a detached manner, as the documentation one is aware of is pictures of the mushroom clouds, or images of people deformed or burned. To truly understand the pain of Hiroshima, one must try to understand all the stories involved in the aftermath – even ones such as Riva’s. An impossible feat – as the true extent of the ripple effect of the bombings will never truly be known. A lot of the stories go by unnoticed and ignored, and even more are lost forever with the lives lost in the bombing. Alain Resnais manages to capture this concept, the essence of which is that the trauma of Hiroshima is shared. It is shared by the people of Japan as well as people all over the world who were affected in ways (however minute) one can only imagine. In this manner, I believe that Resnais adequately treats the nuclear bombing of Japan with respect, providing an insight into and an artistic interpretation of what the bombing truly meant. The tragedy of Hiroshima is not made up of rubble or photographs of mushroom clouds. The true horror of the bombing is the little ways it changed lives worldwide, the unimaginable sorrows faced by not just the Japanese; but also anyone else who survived the war.
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