Hiroshima mon amour: Shattering Time

Hiroshima mon amor was not the first film to use archive footage in combination with narrative footage. However, the way in which Alain Resnais confronts the audience with the B-roll sets the tone at the beginning of the film that drives the destruction and brokenness that both characters feel.

Although I did not particularly care for the film, I can appreciate the powerful technique of separation Resnais employs throughout using the archive footage along with his narrative. As Kent Jones states in his essay Hiroshima mon amor: Time Indefinite, "it's the anguish of past, present, and future: the need to understand exactly who and where we are in time, a need that goes perpetually unsatisfied."

Resnais takes the audience through the emotional roller coaster of a young french women as she deals with the resurfacing of buried feelings of her first love. Ironically, the young woman is an actress who is working on a film about peace in Hiroshima, yet she is unable to find peace within her own life. The film weaves its way between the present of the characters, the past of the young woman, and post A-Bomb footage.

Reminiscent of Eisenstein, Resnais systematically uses the visuals

of documentary footage to showcase the pain and destruction of not only people during that time but that it continues to have on generations. As Resnais clearly points out, Hiroshima can not be rebuilt in a year or two and go back to the way things were before the dropping of the bomb. The bomb devastated families for many years to come and will have a lasting impact on japanese culture.

Resnais's slow, drawn-out narrative does not captivate me. Instead, the magic of his film making is found in his use combining documentary footage with narrative. This was the second time I have seen the film and I must say, it was easier to take than the first time I saw it. Maybe as I age his narrative style will grow on me and I will be able to appreciate it as the work of art that so many others think it is. Maybe so, maybe not, but the images will be with me forever.