Hiroshima Mon Amour
So glad this was nominated. The only Resnais film i've seen is Night and Fog which i think is the best documentary (although not my favourite) i've ever seen and one of the best films overall. So i've been meaning to get to more from him, Last Year At Marienbad was what i was planning on watching but i actually heard somewhere that that is more difficult than this; not sure if that's true or not of course but i've always heard this described as one of the best starting points with Resnais. My god this film is beautiful, the visuals, the music, the script, pretty much everything. This isn't exactly an easy watch i mean it is about Hiroshima; but the way Emmanuelle Riva describes it is hauntingly beautiful. Haunting being the key word because she really got under my skin at times. I only realized after this was done that it was Riva, for those who were in the 10th Hall of Fame you may remember that i thought Amour was a very well made film but it was an extremely tough watch for me, regardless though i thought Riva was outstanding and i'd say the same here, amazing actress. I think this would be an excellent (although depressing) companion piece to Night and Fog as it is pretty similar with the obvious difference of this being fictional, particularly at the parts where we are going through the hospitals at Hiroshima or various places in the city with Riva narrating over a really hypnotic score. It's a very simple yet super effective way of telling a story; the part where we see survivors coming out the water then all sitting together in some sort of shelter all bloodied was a bit tough to watch, with this being fictional Resnais has a bit more room to jazz up the dialogue compared to Night and Fog which is alot more of a straight forward presentation, this brings a whole new dimension to it. The thing is and this is a positive in my mind at times i wasn't really concentrating on the dialogue because the visuals were so striking, i guess for a fluent French speaker like PG this would probably be the case too because he obviously doesn't need to read but i honestly don't think this was a negative for me, Riva's beautiful voice had a weird soothing effect on me that coupled with the visuals made this such a moving experience whether i was reading everything she was saying or not. Not gonna lie i did look away a couple of times too, one part in particular i was watching through my hands when presumably these doctors open this womans eyelid and i just couldn't keep watching in case they did anything to her eyeball which is something i just cannot take.
This did make me sad and especially pretty angry at times. Don't want to start any debates about the use of atomic weapons, but the prevailing opinions of most historians i've read at least (i suppose western-biased ones but anyway) seems to be that Hiroshima at least was necessary some say that Nagasaki wasn't but then again Japanese leadership did have three days to surrender between the two and didn't. The reason some think it was necessaryis because the other option was a land invasion and by this point in the war America was of course going to win and the estimated casaulties for that hypothetical war on Japanese soil greatly exceeds the amount in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Well whether you agree with any of that or not i just am so disgusted that something this horrendous could be a best case scenario in any sense, then it also angers me that by large the leaders who were pushing Japan into war and deciding not to give up after Hiroshima weren't the ones affected by this it was the normal civilians who if they had their own choice would most likely not want war at all which is true of all citizens whether the British, Germans or the people who dropped the bombs Americans. Another thing that is actually a positive (positive as in Japanese-American relations improved) that still annoys me as that as soon as the war was over America and Japan struck up one of the largest trade partnerships of all time, just a few years after they were mortal enemies which lead to this horrible suffering the big business leaders of both countries were greatly profiting together... ugh. Well anyway war sucks.
Anyway i was planning on making my posts this time shorter which i've clearly failed at here because this film greatly affected me. If i kept going it would be much longer i mean i haven't touched on the parts about her childhood and i haven't even mentioned Eji Okada's extremely intriguing role. I don't think i completely grasped everything here but it is such a beautiful film, fantastic nom PG. Only seen a few films so far this year but this is an early contender for one of my favourite first time watches this year.
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I wasn't quite sure what would be the reaction, and it's nice that people are liking it!
. I'd say it is required reading particularly the first paragraph that gives you a good idea of how Resnais saw himself as a filmmaker (unless he was lying as you said haha) i found that really interesting. I'm with you on him feeling like an "auteur" (thus disagreeing with him) i'm not sure if i'm totally convinced that's a real or relevant thing yet but from two films he fits the mold to me. Part of my post was comparing Night and Fog to Hiroshima Mon Amour which obviously isn't a big sample size but in a hypothetical scenario i honestly do think i'd be able to tell they were from the same director if i didn't already know. Suppose his later "puzzle films" (which sounds super intriguing btw even though the way you put it didn't sound very positive it makes me want to see them more haha) might be wildly different, i can see where you are coming from anyway.
