Thisbe

Grief and Longing in Hiroshima Mon Amour

November 14, 2009 at 10:35 am (art film, Marguerite Duras) (Uncategorized)

WARNING: SPOILERS

“I’ll remember you as symbol of a lover’s forgetfulness.”

The place is Hiroshima and the time is 1959, fourteen years after a bomb left the city in ruins. A French woman comes to this part of Japan to star in a movie about peace and meets a Japanese man. They become lovers, lovers in a Hiroshima that appears to be okay, that does not look like it is still scarred and healing from the wreckage.

The opening sequence bombards the audience with startling scenes, sometimes hard to stomach, but impossible to look away from. Burned bodies, bleeding bodies are juxtaposed with perfect, sweat-drenched arms and legs. Two lovers entwined. Women in beautiful kimonos lying on hospital beds. And a little later, one is assaulted with the image of a young woman kissing her dead soldier lover, her mouth covered in his blood. What does it all mean?

The inhabitants of Hiroshima are now far-removed enough from the war and destruction to go to museums and look on their history, as if they never experienced it for themselves. Hiroshima is dotted with classy European-style hotels and other refined venues. The men and women walk about, gorgeously-outfitted, impeccably groomed. No one would know that a little over a decade ago, faces were burned beyond recognition, skin was slipping from backs, and streets were carpeted with debris.

It is in this place where suffering seems to be a thing of the past that the French woman and her Japanese lover embrace, caress, kiss, and talk. Though tender, there is also something feverish and desperate about their lovemaking. Outwardly, it seems that World War II is far behind them, but their conversation revolves around death and war. He only wants to discuss Nevers, where she is from, and the city that they are in now.

“You saw nothing in Hiroshima,” he says to her.

“How could I not have seen it?” She insists.

What did she not see? Destruction? Pain?

This strange and rather unromantic discussion continues until sunrise, when she leaves for work, to act.

Though they know that they will have to inevitably part ways in sixteen hours, the pair clings to each other, making the best of what little time they have. After they meet for a second time, he takes her to a fashionable tea house, and it is here that she reveals the cause of her torment.

She was eighteen in Nevers, living with her parents, when she met and fell in love with “the enemy,” a German soldier. He died, leaving her mad with grief. As a sign of mourning, she shaved her head and let the whole city know about her forbidden romance. This scandal caused her father to lose his business and brought shame upon her entire family.

Return to the present. Walking the streets of Hiroshima alone, the French woman observes that Hiroshima is “tailor-made for love. “ It is vibrant with lights, an Eiffel Tower-like structure looms in the back, and the streets are bustling with activity at early dawn. But Hiroshima is not just a city for romance. It is a place to heal.

Hiroshima, so hurt and traumatized like the French woman, is, ironically, what will make her come to terms with her sadness and to move on. The Japanese man acts as an agent to help her find inner peace. He forces her to relive what’s so painful in order to recover, even slapping her to bring her to the present and awaken her to reality. His attempts to exorcize her demon allow her to reflect upon her life in the years after the end of the war and to see what she must do in order to overcome her anguish.

In the climatic bathroom scene, she drenches her face in a washbasin and thinks about the cause of her pain and what led her to Hiroshima. Her internal monologue reveals that she and her German lover planned on running away to Bavaria together, but when she came to meet him, he had been shot and was already dying. She languished away in a state of near insanity, until one day, when she noticed the warmth of her body and that she was, unfortunately, still alive. At her mother’s urging, she left her hometown for Paris and heard upon her arrival of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Now looking at her reflection, the woman realizes that she had come to Hiroshima, which will be remembered forever as a place of mass destruction, hoping that it would reunite her with the past and keep her from forgetting. She wanted to be in a place that reminded of death and to embark on another affair because this would bring her closer to the man she had loved and lost. With this realization, this self-knowledge, she becomes free.

The movie ends with her telling her lover, “Hi-ro-shi-ma. That is your name.”

To which he responds, “Your name is Nevers. Nevers in France.”

While this film is called, Hiroshima Mon Amour, it is not so much a love story as a story about grief, memory and reconciliation. Hiroshima represents what the woman should strive to become, a survivor. Though many lives were lost or devastated, this Japanese city still managed to rise from the ashes and to move forward.

The woman tries to forget her fallen lover, telling him in her mind, “I consign you to oblivion.” She dismisses their relationship as a “dime store romance” and calls herself a “silly girl.” But the key to recovery is not to forget, but to accept the past and go on with her life. She learns this from Hiroshima.