Revisiting Modernism: Unveiling the Layers of Hiroshima Mon Amour
Category :
Tags :
By: Tania Chakraborty, Department – English [MENG], Semester – PG 3rd Semester, Roll Number – 0055
Abstract: This article offers a comprehensive exploration of Alain Resnais' seminal film, ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ employing a multidimensional analytical framework rooted in the French New Wave, Freudian psychoanalysis, Camusian philosophy, and the tenets of modernist literature. By dissecting the film's narrative structure, character development, and thematic elements, this study unveils the intricate layers that contribute to the cinematic masterpiece. Concluding with an existential perspective, the study synthesizes these various lenses to illuminate the film's profound engagement with existential themes. Through this interdisciplinary exploration, it seeks to enrich our understanding of Resnais' groundbreaking film, positioning it within the broader context of cinematic, psychological, and philosophical discourse.
Revisiting Modernism: Unveiling the Layers of Hiroshima Mon Amour
Alan Resnais's directorial prowess in ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ is a symphony of visual poetry and narrative innovation. The film, co-scripted by Marguerite Duras, delves into the complexities of memory and the trauma of war, establishing Resnais as a trailblazer in the exploration of non-linear storytelling. As a reflection of popular culture in the aftermath of World War II, ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ encapsulates the collective consciousness of a society grappling with the repercussions of global conflict. The film intertwines the personal and the political, the intimate and the universal, providing a poignant commentary on the fragility of human connection in the face of historical cataclysms. ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ is a testament to the French New Wave, which was born in the late 1950s, as a reaction against the formulaic and stagnant cinematic traditions of the time. It drew inspiration from the modernist movement in literature and art, embracing a fragmented narrative style, self-reflexivity, and a rejection of linear storytelling.
In ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ Woolf employs stream of consciousness to delve into the inner lives of her characters, using a nonlinear narrative to encapsulate the fluidity of their thoughts. Similarly, ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ adopts a fragmented structure to navigate the memories and emotions of its protagonists. The film opens with a fifteen-minute prefatory sequence, a series of scenes that juxtapose close-up images of the lovers’ bodies embracing with images of Hiroshima. It tells the story of the brief love affair between a Japanese architect played by Eiji Okada and Emmanuelle Riva’s actress on her final day shooting a film that takes place in Hiroshima. She, a French actress, a tourist about to depart, wants to see Hiroshima. She wants to know the city, the remains of its traumatic history; and the monuments it has erected to preserve that history. He, a Japanese architect living in Hiroshima, knows that she cannot “see” the city, cannot know its past through her vision. And so, he disputes her knowledge of his city and its past. He says, “You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing”. The Japanese architect's assertion that the actress “saw nothing in Hiroshima” introduces phenomenological perspectives on perception and experience. Resnais’ film explores Merleau-Ponty's ‘Phenomenology of Perception’, which contributes to the understanding that perception is not merely a visual process but a holistic, embodied engagement with the world. In this context, the architect challenges the actress's attempt to know Hiroshima solely through vision, suggesting that true understanding involves a more profound, multisensory engagement with the city and its traumatic history. The first portion of the opening sequence details the hospital, the museum, and the square while she describes them in voice-over. Among these images are short intercut scenes of the lovers’ bodies. Following a shot of the hospital corridor, following an image of Peace Square outside the museum, following explanations and ephemera related to the dropping of the bomb, and following reenactments and archival newsreels documenting the bomb’s immediate aftermath, the scene cuts to extreme close-up shots of the intertwined arms of the two lovers. Over the course of one day, Riva tells Okada the story of a relationship that took place in Nevers, her childhood home, when she was eighteen years old. She tells him of her desire to flee France with her lover for Bavaria, of her lover’s death upon France’s liberation, and of the subsequent humiliation and madness she suffered, branded a traitor by her town and forced into captivity in the basement of her parents’ home. This memory is one that she has kept to herself, that she has, until now, resisted telling. The prototypical modern psyche split in two, Riva tells her story, but as she tells, she holds back. As she reveals, she conceals. In the context of Riva's narrative, her holding back and concealing aspects of her story could be seen as a manifestation of the Freudian concept of repression. Freud writes in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, “The ideas which have been forgotten during the day are exactly the ones which prove to be the most capable of awaking during the night those emotions that are strongest and most distressing.” The characters' internal monologues and the fragmented presentation of memories capture the subjective nature of experience, aligning with the modernist emphasis on exploring the inner workings of the human mind. The refusal to forget or repress aligns with modernist tendencies to confront the harsh realities of the human condition. This detachment reminds us of the lines, “And we shall play a game of chess, /The ivory men make company between us…” from ‘The Waste Land’ by T.S Eliot. The precise and detached language in describing the chess pieces can be seen as a way of trying to create a semblance of order and control, perhaps as a means of escaping or forgetting the chaos and devastation brought about by the war.
Towards the beginning of the film, Resnais shows the French actress and the Japanese architect in the former’s hotel room: as Okada’s character watches Riva put on a crisp nurse outfit, she informs him that she is acting in “a film about peace. What else would you expect in Hiroshima?” she asks. In Erich Maria Remarque's novel ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and Wilfred Owen's war poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ characters yearn for peace amid the psychological scars of war, underscoring the universal human quest for serenity in the wake of profound conflict. Similarly, as the film comes to an end, we see that the characters grapple for peace within the haunting echoes of war's aftermath. While absurdist works, such as those by Albert Camus, often highlight the inherent meaninglessness of life, and nihilism dismisses the existence of inherent meaning altogether, Resnais' film places the characters in an existentialist space which contends that individuals must create their own meaning and purpose in a seemingly indifferent or chaotic world.
Bibliography
- Marie, Michael. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. Wiley. 2002.
- Thompson, Kristin. Bordwell, David. Film History: An Introduction, Third Edition. McGraw Hill. 2010, p.407–408.
- Dowling, David. Mrs. Dalloway: Mapping Streams of Consciousness... Boston. Twayne Publishers, 1991.
- Bergan, Ronald. England, my England. 19.06 GMT, 27th Nov. 1998, https://www.theguardian.com/film/1998/nov/27/3?INTCMP=SRCH.
- Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical Interpretations: T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
- Baldwin, Thomas. Introduction to Merleau-Ponty's The World of Perception. New York: Routledge, 2008.
- Storr, Anthony. Freud: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1989.
- Monaco, James. Alain Resnais. New York: Oxford University Press. 1979.