Hiroshima Love is one of the must-see movies. I watched it for the second time today in French film class and was furious. First of all, Hiroshima Love is not about the love between a French woman and a Japanese man. Duras and Resnais mean combining individual disasters with human disasters, warning us not to forget Hiroshima. That's what makes me angry too. The film's furious time-lapse recounts the tragic loss of a French woman's first love, an enemy German officer she shouldn't love. After the war, the German was executed, she was despised and her hair was shaved. So the logic of the film is the connection between the French woman's personal pain and Hiroshima's pain. But apart from the beginning of the movie, except that the story takes place in Hiroshima, the third-rate love story of a French woman is called the theme of the movie, and the Japanese man is just a stand-in for a German, an introduction to a story, a reflection of a lover. What I can't reassure is that hundreds of thousands of hurt and a loss of an old love can't be an emotion on one level. Hiroshima is a tragedy of war, a tragedy of technology, and a tragedy of human nature. Individual love is noble, but cannot go hand in hand with these themes. Putting the love of an 18-year-old girl and the disaster of hundreds of thousands in one theme, where is the heaviness of history?
The Japanese are not very interested in taking pictures of Hiroshima. I don't need to say more about the crimes committed by the defeated countries of World War II and allies of the Nazis. Just as Germany never dared to take pictures of its own country's pain in World War II. But the people of Hiroshima are indeed pitiful. Hundreds of thousands of lives were wiped out in a few seconds. The most ironic thing is that the Hiroshima disaster is a symbol of the end of World War II, a sign of the victory of the Allies, and the dawn of liberation. But Hiroshima is worthy of our human reflection. The film's opening montage drops some of the rubble of Hiroshima's bombed-out streets, deformed bodies, homeless children, and burnt skin. The whole image is like hell, doomsday, hopeless.
Perhaps for the romantic French, love is a deeper feeling. Of course, for the innovation of film technology and editing, Hiroshima Love is an indelible milestone. But Hiroshima Love is inappropriate as the first film about the Hiroshima incident.
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