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Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Director: Alain Resnais
Writer: Marguerite Duras
Cast: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas
Genre: Drama, Romance, History
About: A French actress who's in Hiroshima to make an anti-war film. There she has an affair with a married Japanese man and they talk about their own experiences during WWII.
Review: The first 15 minutes were powerful with the archival film footage of Hiroshima's aftermath from the atomic bomb that was dropped on it during WWII. I mean how could it not be powerful? The director shows you a kid with his lips burnt off and a close up of a woman with her eye melted away! That was gross. I found the scenes of the destroyed city interesting, in a somber way.
But what followed in the next hour, I found to be ineffective. Any feelings about the war and the atomic bomb that I had, were washed away by watching the inane French actress do nothing but bemoan her wartime experience in the French town of, Nevers.
It's hard to believe that a movie about Hiroshima that was actually filmed there could have next to zero impact on me. I've been much more moved by History Channel documentaries about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I get what the director is trying to do...much of what the French woman and the Japanese man are saying is metaphorical, and her insanity is the insanity of war...and his relative calm is society forgetting about the horrors of war. Metaphors work in small doses...and I guess in arthouse films. But I could've cared less about the plight of the French actress, so I ended up not caring about the film either.
This movie did nothing for me, sorry not my cup of Sake.
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Writer: Marguerite Duras
Cast: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas
Genre: Drama, Romance, History
About: A French actress who's in Hiroshima to make an anti-war film. There she has an affair with a married Japanese man and they talk about their own experiences during WWII.
Review: The first 15 minutes were powerful with the archival film footage of Hiroshima's aftermath from the atomic bomb that was dropped on it during WWII. I mean how could it not be powerful? The director shows you a kid with his lips burnt off and a close up of a woman with her eye melted away! That was gross. I found the scenes of the destroyed city interesting, in a somber way.
But what followed in the next hour, I found to be ineffective. Any feelings about the war and the atomic bomb that I had, were washed away by watching the inane French actress do nothing but bemoan her wartime experience in the French town of, Nevers.
It's hard to believe that a movie about Hiroshima that was actually filmed there could have next to zero impact on me. I've been much more moved by History Channel documentaries about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I get what the director is trying to do...much of what the French woman and the Japanese man are saying is metaphorical, and her insanity is the insanity of war...and his relative calm is society forgetting about the horrors of war. Metaphors work in small doses...and I guess in arthouse films. But I could've cared less about the plight of the French actress, so I ended up not caring about the film either.
This movie did nothing for me, sorry not my cup of Sake.