Aside from the business cards such as "the milestone in the transformation of classical Western films to modern times", "the pioneering work of literary films", and "the explosion point of modernist ripples", and regardless of the structure of the stream of consciousness, the interlaced editing techniques of time and space, the narrative perspective and psychology of the monologue From the perspective of its complex core, Hiroshima Love is also a well-deserved movie in my eyes.
The storyline is very simple. The French actress and heroine had a German first love when France was occupied in World War II. After her hometown of Nevers was liberated, her lover was killed. 14 years later, Hiroshima, which was bombed by an atomic bomb in 1945, fell in love with a Japanese architect.
1. Painful communion:
The film breaks the temporal and spatial barriers between the tragic experience of the French girl Neville and the historical trauma of Hiroshima, making the personal pain and historical pain with a certain similarity intertwined and inseparable, which belong to the same level—— Absolute pain and absolute trauma, regardless of superiority, bring a person or a world a devastating and incurable painful memory.
In addition, both wounds are caused by war, giving the theme a distinct anti-war undertone and sympathy for the small and medium-sized figures of the era.
Interestingly, the film also implied Duras's own political stance, that is, the anti-De Gaulle anti-Algerian war. In the film, the Marseillaise singing in the street during the liberation of Nevels contrasts sharply with the tragic image of the heroine in the dungeon, thus reflecting Duras's view of the liberation of France - this is not a glorious victory, but a contradiction A moment of conflict, violence and shame.
2. Extreme experience and subconscious:
A question Duras has always been keen on is the possibility or suitability of bringing intense extreme experiences back into consciousness. The so-called intense extreme experience refers to the feeling at the time of the experience that is so strong that it cannot be accurately perceived, but it is unforgettable, uncontrollable, and powerless to the person who has experienced it.
This is somewhat similar to Freud's repression, that is, "the individual suppresses opposing or unacceptable impulses, desires, thoughts, emotions, or painful experiences in the conscious unconsciously into the subconscious, so that the person cannot perceive or Memories to avoid pain". But past experiences have always had an impact on the individual's present subconsciously, just as the heroine's speech and behavior are haunted by the shadow of the past like maggots.
3. Reproduce:
The passion for extreme experiences raises the question of reproduction.
The heroine always uses "you" to call her Japanese lover, but she is actually calling her German first love. She repeats past experiences in her romance with a Japanese architect, projecting her encounter with a German lover onto a Japanese lover, thereby reconstructing these experiences.
So, will the revival of the extreme experience of passionate love and the reappearance of painful past bring about deeper pain or healing? At the end of the film, the heroine said "I have forgotten you", but the crying is ambiguous, and the name of the Japanese lover is still "you". We seem to understand Duras' point of view - reproduction is not a therapeutic catharsis potential avenues, which may seal victims in pain and create an illusion of recovery.
The pain of the past cannot be healed. By linking Duras' childhood misfortune and the confession in "The Lover", one will find that the lack of love, poverty, inferiority and flaws have indeed followed Duras throughout his life, so it is not difficult to understand her position. Pessimistic.
4. Freezing age point:
The age of stagnation is a concept mentioned in "Bojack Horseman", which refers to the moment when a person stops growing spiritually.
At the end of the film, the Japanese lover told the heroine "your name is Nevel", implying that the heroine's freezing age was when her first love in Germany was shot to death. Nevel, so "she died in Nevel", and all her life after that was just living.
It cannot be ignored that the heroine said "your name is Hiroshima" to the Japanese lover, and the film begins to mention that he participated in the war. Although not in Hiroshima, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is a symbol of Japan's suffering in World War II. This makes people wonder, does this Japanese architect also have a secret past, whether he was traumatized in the war and stopped growing up?
The whole film is mainly to explore the story and psychology of the heroine, but this sentence at the end makes the audience imagine the experience of the hero, his pain, his extreme experience, and what his spiritual world should be like. ? Words are endless.
5. Person change:
Duras is also not unskilled in playing with person changing. The heroine calls her Japanese lover "you", sometimes her Japanese lover, and sometimes her first love in Germany; she sometimes calls her present and past herself "I" and sometimes "she"; when recalling her first love in Germany, she sometimes uses "" you" and sometimes "he". If you taste it carefully, you can find the emotional and mental state changes of the heroine as a discordant individual with inner defects in different situations, but because it is too complicated, she really does not have the energy to analyze it.
Finally, the lines of this film are the soul, which embodies the perfect combination of literature and film.
I don't feel anything special about Marion Bader, and I've seen Jacques Arnold's lover feel a little less of the original.
But the love of Hiroshima, Duras's script + Rene's stream of consciousness shooting method, produced an incredible chemical reaction.
Coupled with the exquisite composition and framing, it can't be more appropriate.
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