Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima My Love)
dir. Alain Renais, screenplay by Marguerite Duras
(1959); on Reserve (under a different class) in Sprague Library for
viewing in Multimedia Resources/basement (DVD #1847)
Director Renais was asked to do a documentary about Hiroshima, but he
produced this instead.
Hiroshima
Facts
Nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima
Aug. 6, 1945 and on Nagasaki
on Aug. 9, 1945, bringing, for the Americans, WWII to an
end.
Nearly "200,000 dead, 80,000 injured" in Hiroshima and Nagaski. The
injured continue to live as outcasts for their disfigurement,
infertility, and uncomfortable memory of tragedy.
What does
this allegory mean?
Woman from Nevers, France = An
actress making a film about Hiroshima, where she starts an affair with
a Japanese man. She relives her first sexual experience (coming of
age), her affair with a German soldier.
The woman’s backstory, her affair with an enemy German, draws attention
to her "doubtful morals" (Duras 35). Her affair with the Japanese man
likewise represents an attempt to reconcile with a (in this case,
former) enemy.
Man from Hiroshima, Japan =
body of / audience of Hiroshima. As an architect, he is part of the
rebuilding process. Renais intentionally cast a "Western" looking
Japanese man.
Japanese
man, Hiroshima mon amour: “Have you ever noticed that people notice
what they want?”
For Westerners, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki meant the
end of the war.
Renais translates this ambivalence as “indifference” and “fear of
indifference”--about love, betrayal, and understanding others'
experiences.
Renais raises the important question: How
can Westerners really understand the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Answer: We cannot, because we, like the Frenchwoman, have "doubtful
morals." She keeps trying to share the experience with her lover, but
he keeps telling her she knows nothing ("You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
Nothing," 15).
More evidence for this interpretation:
The woman says that “just as in love this illusion exists, this
illusion of being able never to forget, so I was under the illusion
that I would never forget Hiroshima” (19).
And yet she forgot/is forgetting her affair with the German.
Renais is saying that, as in love, we Westerners will forget Hiroshima
(and Nagasaki), and go on to betray someone else . . . .
Works Cited
Duras, Marguerite. Hiroshima
mon amour. Trans. R. Seaver. NY: Grove, 1961.
W. C. Nielsen,
"Hiroshima mon amour." Sept. 2008.