"The path of the city: intricate, winding, whimsical. People who walk on the road, while lost in their own path, place their memories in it. Walking in a city is equivalent to forgetting her." -- Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life
While writing Renai's thesis, I opened the film again: When I watched "Hiroshima Love" for the first time a year and a half ago, I pondered over and over again with confusion and curiosity. Although I didn't understand why, I was deeply attracted by the Hiroshima created by Duras and Resnais.
Tu me plais. Quel événement. Tu me plais. Quelle lenteur tout à coup. Quelle douceur. Tu ne peux pas savoir. Tu me tues. Tu me fais du bien. (I like you. How unlikely. I like you. How slowly all of a sudden. How sweet. You do not know. You destroy me. You are so good for me.)
It was only today that I fully realized how unique Hiroshima Love is. The woman's monologue travels through Hiroshima with shaky footage as we search for lost memories on camera. For the men and women in film, memory is never just personal. As Deleuze once analyzed: "For these two people, the memory woven together has never been a way to forget the memory. The memory seems to have been separated from the individual and flowed in a space belonging to the 'world'." The film Hiroshima in the middle is Hiroshima for men and Nevers for women. It can also be called a city that belongs to any of us.
Traveling through Hiroshima, we were amazed by its gleaming neon lights, towering electrical towers, and even a movie theater with Casablanca—a rapid postwar reconstruction that pushed memory, history and pain into the museum. The museum exhibits under the camera move look so unremarkable:
“Quatre fois au musée à Hiroshima. (Four times at the musuem in Hiroshima.)”
The woman has visited Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Museum four times, but she is still an "outsider": she can only follow the bus and listen to the tour guide to browse Hiroshima, as if Japan has locked its past in this museum, and women can only Only in the museum can we get a glimpse of Japan's memory after "self-censorship". The "Museum of Remembrance" ironically became the "Museum of Anti-Remembrance". As Resnais said in his 1956 documentary "Night and Fog":
“no description, no picture can restore their true dimension: endless fear.”
But as the camera passes through the narrow, filthy vegetable market streets, the woman feels real love, a sense of being one with the city: as if the shaky camera itself is shaking magnificent statues, authoritative museums and immortal remains. If the museum symbolizes the collection of memories after official censorship, then the flowing scenery that the camera passes through is the real memory of the city. In the process of walking in the city, we not only discovered official and public memories, but also explored those extremely private memories, those emotions hidden behind the signs of small shops. And these are the real flesh and blood of the city. The woman walks across the street and says "Cities are made for love". Only at this moment did she really discover that the city's emotions were hidden under the bricks she walked through.
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