Hiroshima Mon Amour | Marguerite Duras | Brilliant. Unusual. Intense.

Hiroshima Mon Amour | Marguerite Duras | Can we still love in prescience of our inevitable doom?

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Hiroshima Mon Amour

	Hiroshima Mon Amour Marguerite Duras Grove Press, 1994 - 112 pages average customer review:based on 60 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Brilliant. Unusual. Intense.

Personal opinion: The reviewer identified as Octavius really missed the point on this film! He/she seems to need secure and sanctioned rules for structuring a work of art. It reminds me of those critics who railed against Beethoven because he "broke the rules" of the self-appointed authorities who could neither hear nor imagine anything beyond Haydn.

I agree with Octavius about Philip Glass's ho-hum meandering music. But Glass's music is not at all analogous to this film. I hold a doctorate in music composition and from that perspective, Glass's music evokes virtually nothing for me. And it isn't the structure or "post-modernist" emptiness of it. So much of it just lies there doing nothing and going nowhere.

This film is not like that at all. It also does not suggest that anyone is a true hero or villain. It does show the tragedy and the existential angst of war and its aftermath. It does evoke the indecipherable mystery of attraction between people who "shouldn't" be attracted to each other (especially according to what seem to be Octavius's inviolable "rules" for human behavior). It does confront the viewer with the reality of the inexplicable in human relationships. It does not let the viewer avoid the reality of the myriad, compelling, and beckoning forces of the human psyche, conscious and/or unconscious. Those forces can create certain attractions between people that are virtually irresistible. To me, Octavius appears not to understand this. Or maybe he/she just finds it too painful to accept. But, I'm just guessing here and I admit that I digress.

Evidently, Octavius and others seem to believe that tight structural control and officially sanctioned modes of artistic expression are sacrosanct. Within certain styles, it would be hard to disagree. But, I don't agree here. If the structurally sacrosanct were held inviolable for every style, then nothing outside the conventional could ever be attempted. No new forms or directions could be born. Thankfully, that is not the case in art as a whole. Hiroshima Mon Amour, especially for the time in which it was conceived, steps outside the conventional to explore expressive realms of passion and angst seldom seen in films preceding it.

This is a great film. I highly recommend it.

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Can we still love in prescience of our inevitable doom?

When one speaks of the great films of all time - Hiroshima Mon Amour somehow makes it onto most lists. The details of the film have been admirably delineated and debated in the many reviews here - I would rather discuss the question stated above - which I believe is at the heart of the film - impelling the drama - and is the inspiration for its production.
The post-modern era began on August 6, 1945 - it is the only 'era' of humanity for which we can provide an exact beginning date (we're rather proud of our tendency to organize our historicity into the discrete steps of a linear progression - whether or not such a reality actually exists - we
get a sense of security from thinking that it does). I believe the stream of consciousness depicted in the film runs a parallel commentary on this tendency as we try to make 'sense' of our individual lives.
The love affair is set against the dark facade of our hope of demarcating an end to this era by transcending what seems to be the inexorable nuclear annihilation to which - paradoxically, in our passion for transcendence, we are committed.
The grandeur of the film is that (characteristically existential, as in many of the films of the French New Wave which would follow), the viewer is left to choose - is the statement here an affirmation of life - or an expression of its seemingly inescapable futility in an age where too many are committed to violence, greed, and a too easy acceptance of the possibility of Armageddon, against which the film lyrically, magnificently rages?
Although the sets alone are worth the price of the dvd (the guy has in his apartment absolutely the best tatami mats and plushest futon get up ever seen)- the meaning is what is really beyond value - a concept so tritely overdone in filmaking these days that most films seem to come straight off the grill. HMA harkens back to a time when the translation was communicated in the care taken with the details - an art which has been lost with the virtualization of real effects.

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Mémoire Mon Amour

Hi-ro-shi-ma in montage is how Resnais begins his famous (or infamous) film about love's forgetfulness. With cinematography at its best, Resnais displays an extraordinary juxtaposition between the main woman-character's past romance with Hiroshima's past destruction. While the French-woman and the Japanese-man present the "current" love affair of the movie, Hiroshima Mon Amour actually takes place beyond the couple. Primarily dealing with the past, but looking forward to the future, the main characters, really the French-woman but including Hiroshima, deal with their histories even if they are forgotten. The terse, poetic dialogue unfurls the story's complexities with absolute grace, but still leaves much to the imagination. The cinematography is resplendent, but desolate; dreamy, but honest; innovative, but elementary; and above all: beautiful, but heartbreaking. Even to-day, there is not a film like this. Comparable only to itself. To not see this film: is to not see the world of celluloid from all of its seemingly-diversified angles. This film is so different, you may not like it the first time you see it. I didn't. But it warrants subsequent viewings. Absolutely. Then it lures you. Beckons more. If you're going to see a film - see a film. See Hiroshima Mon Amour.

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A French woman

I haven't finished reading this book yet, but I think it is an interesting book...especially b/c it is written by a female French author.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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