Hiroshima Mon Amour

So I watched Hiroshima Mon Amour last night.

Here are some quotes:

"Looking closely at something has to be learned." Yes.

"You were bored in a way that makes a man want to know a woman." OK.

"What do you call having 'dubious morals?'"
"Being dubious about other people's morals." Right.

Overall not the most exciting film, although it would have been better to see it in the theater of course. It's one of Scorcese's favorite films; it changed the way he viewed filmmaking. The images are pretty incredible. The documentary footage in the beginning especially, which seems to alternate between staged re-enactments and actual footage from the days following the bombing. Burnt men staring into space with there mouths open, the hair singed from their heads. [Female lead] travels to Hiroshima partly to film a movie, in which she plays a nurse, but partly because she's fascinated by the place, with its history of tragedy. The change in her attitude is drastic, and very realistic. The first 15 minutes show her to be a well-spoken, giddy lover, clawing her Japanese man's soft back, and smiling hugely like someone who's never been damaged by love. But gradually she becomes more and more aware of her past, starts to remember it for him, referring to both her ex-lover, who died of sniper fire as she was en route to meet him for a private rendezvous, and her current fling. Her love is one continuous personage over time. Simply "You." And she relates the original "You", who died in her arms, with the here-and-now "You." A bad idea. She's living in the past. So little happens in the now, in the film's present. The film is dominated by flashbacks.

At the start, the two are talking in bed.She relating what she saw years after the bomb was dropped, form re-enacted footage, from the museums which preserved the hair that fell like wigs from women's heads, pieces of flesh, photos of deformed hands and feet, lip-less faces, women missing eyes. She tells him all that she saw, and he says something like, "You did not see Hiroshima." He having experienced it. Although he does none of the telling. (This is imperfectly remembered, but interesting for it.) He, having experienced the bombing, does not contribute any details. He lets the woman - who has a husband and a few kids - give her imperfect interpretation of the events, recalling things she never saw. And then she goes on to tell her own story, of how she went mad over the loss of her love. A pretty chilling series of scenes of her confined to a basement, chewing on the salty cellar walls, escaping in the middle of the night to gnaw on tree bark, wandering around in a daze. All pretty haunting. Supposed to be one of the first films of the New Wave movement. Alain Resnais. What else has he done?