Reviews

I. Introduction

This movie has a strong reputation, but I knew very little about this movie before my first viewing. I was only aware that Marguerite Duras, a fine writer, had produced the original screenplay for the movie and that it was considered a literary gem in its own right. The screenplay is one that you can read and enjoy, on its own, even if no movie had ever been made from it (more on this later).

Alain Resnais is the director. I draw it to your attention that this is Resnais' first feature film, and apparently foreshadowed the style of much of his later career. What is clear from this film at least, that he is a gifted, sensitive and unyielding artist. The techniques with which he brings this screenplay to life are rigorous and unflinching. There is love behind what he has done here; you can tell he loves this story and he loves these characters.

II Mechanics

The movie has only two main personalities. The film follows a brief connection between these two people, over the course of approximately 48 hours. It is a very short film, but its a very compacted one; and all its elements are densely fused together --like a diamond or other gemstone. Its aspects are clear, fine, and bright; there is no murkiness or muddle in the ideas of this film. It is not just a rambling 'romance story'. It is literally a movie in which the camera films little more than the memories of two strangers--and the emotional conundrums that expand when their owners meet, and combine. When each faces the growth of a new relationship. The plot is simple; however the emotions are not. Its a complex psychological study and a visual poem.

The setting of the film is extremely succinct: only a few locations contain the entire movie. The journey is rather through an emotional terrain-- a journey of these characters' memories. This inner terrain unfolds (as does everything else in the film) through the dialogue of these two individuals to each other.

The characters are a beautiful French actress doing a location-shoot in the town of Hiroshima, Japan; and a Japanese man she meets there. She has a striking appearance, with a face that is both young and old at the same time; a body that is slim but wizened. Her aspect is alluring and carefree in some shots, but she wears her hair in a mature, classic, manner--almost severe. She is in Hiroshima for a few days only at most. It is 1959. She is about 34, and married, but has allowed herself to be picked up by a sensitive, intelligent Japanese man in a bar. He is an architect. They are spending the night together; many of the camera's opening shots are of their closely-entwined limbs.

Their conversation begins --and becomes--the movie. Its initially a lovers' conversation, as typically happens between a couple lying in bed after sex. They are talking lazily, insouciantly, chuckling with one another over this or that comment, and playing with each other as they rest. Its a very long scene and takes up almost the first third of the film.

What is odd is that the camera doesnt waver--and this is what is intense: the camerawork thrusts you right into this bed and into every expression exchanged between the couple. There is no retreat or pulling-back. There is not a lot of quick cuts between one face and the other either; a few extended shots capture it all. Because the faces are so close to each other (the two figures are almost one) it can be captured in this deft manner.

Its an incredibly daring, bold, ruthless cinema. Very like Bergman. I emphasize it here because it is the filming of the actors' faces, as close as feasibly possible, that characterizes the entire movie. Their faces are the landscape of the whole film: your eyes range and glide over the woman's face in particular, which becomes vast and sombre as she relates fragments of her past life to the man beside her, under his coaxing. The conversation eventually becomes tormented and agonizing.

But you are witness to every muscle tremor, every nerve twitch, you absorb every expression as it flickers across her beautiful, fey complexion. You watch her huge, sad, brown eyes that gaze into space as she talks about herself. Her smiles turn up the corners of her mouth at times, but her face remains wan and stark. She has the ability to display more than one emotion at a time. Excellent casting and astounding performances, particularly from this actress. The work it must have taken to get these close-up shots so precise and correct--the effects are mesmerizing.

I will tell you briefly that the rest of the plot is very simple: the woman rises for her day's filming, but her lover, who becomes increasingly absorbed and obsessed with her, follows her. The last third of the movie is set in the bar they met at the night before, where he attempts to convince her to stay in Hiroshima. (At the end of the film, this is still left ambiguous). There is a montage or two, there are flashbacks deployed which help reveal the woman's past up to this trip to Hiroshima.

III. Meaning

What really goes on here? How can a film survive on a construction of only three basic scenes, and two characters? Well, what happens is that with a human theme of this microscopic focus, the addition of anything more than a few basic sets, scenes, or actions is negligible. Duras, rather, is exploring their souls. Exteriorality simply doesnt matter. The nature of the relationship between the pair reduces everything else to ornament, prelude and ephemera to their contact.

What develops the tension is the crucially important dialogue the pair have with each other. Because of the complexity of the verbal revelations, it is the dialogue that becomes dominant in this film. Its hard to explain. The two people are merely telling each other stories of how they grew up; they talk about where they were the day that U.S. forces dropped the atomic bomb. The man was a soldier in the Japanese army at the time, she was a young girl in a small town in France. She had been in love with a soldier who died. Again, very simple.

But note this: when she speaks to this Japanese man, a wonderful device is used by Duras (and filmed exquisitely by Resnais). She is speaking to the Japanese man but really she is talking to her past lover. So, all is not what it seems. Growth is really destruction, peace is really war, love is really death as seen through the prism of this woman's history--thats why she's in Hiroshima. And it is this 'doubling-over' and multiplicity of character with its symbol that is the heart of this film.

It is a dialogue not just between two lovers but between two people and their pasts. There are surfaces under surfaces. All of the elements are in juxtaposition. All of them are mirrored. All of them are in conflict. All of them are in alignment. The movie swirls with rich, intermeshed images, symbols, allusions, and metaphors.

For example, when the woman speaks of the river Loire that ran by her home, you see (all at the same time) her face, the river, and from the depths of the river, a hand beckoning (and it is the hand which is the memory she is recalling when she speaks of the river). This is but a minor example of the care that went into crafting every scene in this film. Its absolutely grand. I cant say anymore without giving it all away.

Flaws: the one flaw I see in this entire movie is that the dialogue is not always what you would really hear someone speak in real life. The sentences are at times very cumbersome, overly-literate and 'speechy'. It is as if Duras forgot that people dont utter really complex, poetic sentences to each other in real life. The screenplay should have been altered just enough to efface this. At these moments it really would have been better to have been reading the dialogue rather than listening to it; because it just sounds stilted and frail.

And there are times when the poetic images and metaphors are repeated and touched upon excessively--the density of the layers becomes a distraction in itself. Sometimes Resnais or Duras advances a motif, not just two or three times but five or six times, redoubling it in only a very few minutes. It would have been better to have a lighter touch in some places. But these are minor complaints.

IV Conclusion

Overall HMA is an enormously sensitive work of filmmaking. The story itself is moving in a way that should have impact and bearing on everyone, because it is all about self-awareness, and understanding how our hearts function--these are experiences that we all share in.

TS Eliot once said that "April is the cruelest month, because it forces new life up out of the cold earth . . " (my paraphrase). This is a good quote to keep in mind when considering 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'. The Greeks also said something that bears on this film: namely that change is the true nature of the universe. This movie is about self-change. It is about the cruelty inherent in personal growth, in having to shed your bonds with the dead.

HMA is a story about being alive and being human. It is about the pain of loving or losing one's love and the greater torment at having to relinquish that pain we sometimes wish to nurse and hold on to. These are sometimes the effects that loving someone has on your soul; and I will go out on a limb and say that its never been treated better than in this movie. Perhaps 'Last Year at MarienBad' is a close second.

But the emotional signature of 'Hiroshima mon Amour' is wholly unique. The movie is a landmark in cinema.

This film demonstrates that if a cinematic work obeys the rules of good, simple lucid storytelling, it can hold up for a very long time indeed.

Here is my synopsis of this wonderful film--certainly an instance where a great book (by James Hilton, who also did "A High Wind in Jamaica" and "Lost Horizon", two novels which also benefited by excellent screenplays) translates well to the big screen. The character of Chipping is well worth exploration--one of cinema's most memorable figures. In this synopsis I want to mainly touch on the personality of Chipping--and why his story makes such an impression on the viewer. Its a case of a character being well-drawn enough to strike a spark of recognition in us--we all know someone like Chipping.

First of all, Chipping is a person who doesnt think too much of himself. Outwardly, he is completely unremarkable. As a young man he has no prospects. He is wayward and drifting, and all on his own. He has no family to speak of. He seems to come from nowhere and also seems to be going nowhere. He is not a "mover or a shaker". He is a meek little mouse of a man that registers on no one. He is quiet and shy. He is on the reserved, traditional side, conservative in speech, dress, deportment, and character. He is also bookish and myopic--neither charismatic in looks nor athletic in limb (at odds in an age filled with charismatic, athletic specimens).

"Chips" hardly is a type to "stand out in a crowd" and he knows it. This makes him not a "joiner". He has few associations, and his friendships are not very deep. Chips "keeps himself to himself". He loves frequently, for example, but the objects of his affection are never aware of it. He is one of those loner types, who feel the urge to try to fit in but find that they are not really suited to fit in anywhere. He is one of those people who have worlds inside of them that no one ever sees.

Whatever noble qualities he has are all hidden and on the inside of the man, rather than on the outside. Chips is the epitome of the socially awkward, introspective, backward individual. When the story begins, we may surmise that, even though a young man in his early twenties, he has proably never yet been with a woman. Where would he have had the chance?

In any case, Chips is taken on as an instructor at an English boarding school in the middle 19th century. The heyday of the English boarding school. This, the start of "his position" in life, is certainly one important aspect of his life and of this story.

But the real "hook" of the narrative, the most important personal event in his existence, begins as an incident that happens shortly after he is settled into his teaching career. One holiday he accepts an invitation to go cycling in the Alps with a colleague. On a solitary hike into the mountains, he encounters a fellow English tourist--a woman--on her own.

She is an extraordinary woman--an outgoing, experienced, cosmopolitan, charismatic, beautiful, graceful, clever, engaging --a truly marvellous woman. But she is a woman that is usually "already taken". A woman that, at her age, is usually found on the arm of a captain of industry, or an actor, or a politician. A woman of substance and import. A woman that can get any man she would want.

Why is she single? Coincidentally, just as Chips is an oddity in his gender, she is an oddity to hers. She isnt empty-headed, for one thing, although she is very beautiful. She has standards. Although she has been courted incessantly by men from a very early age she is holding out until she meets a man that has inside him, the values and ideals that she prizes. And she happens to be wise enough and sharp-eyed enough and insightful enough to spy the admirable interior qualities of Chips. She sees that he is loyal and devoted and true of heart.

So, from this chance meeting, a romance develops. Chips, of course, is truly astonished. But it becomes a fact. The two actually do marry. The woman does not want a politician, an actor, or a captain of industry--she wants him. She is the only other living being who comes close enough to see him at all--really see him. This is the very happiest time Chips ever has in his whole existence. He comes alive. He is out of his shell. From that point on, he does a lot of things that he would never have dreamed of doing previously. Its because he is no longer alone.

The two have maybe two or three years of life together--until, one day, the woman takes ill from some reason or other and, unaccountably, dies at a young age. Chips has to spend the rest of his life in love with something that is no longer real. His memories are real, to him, but he never again lives in the way that he did when he enjoyed her company.

He will remain at the school for a good many years--in fact, he will live his life there and die there. The remainder of the story, and the movie, is about how this meek soul actually manages to eke out a very passable life for himself, to obtain some measure of happiness despite his humble beginnings and the sadness of his early tragedy.

Chips actually manages to have a life that despite all obstacles, exerts a positive effect on a great many other people. We see him able to live to a very great age, despite many years of loneliness, despite many hardships and trials. Over time, his inner qualities prove him to be seen by many people as a worthwhile person. Completely by accident.

In fact, he winds up to be the most-loved member of the school's faculty. The satisfaction arising from this fact may be the only solace that Chips attains, but to him its enough. He never forgets the woman. But, the story seems to say, he seems to be able to find . . . compensation.

"Goodbye Mr. Chips" is a movie that deals surely and confidently with the most integral and basic, human-scale events: yearnings and disappointments, dreams, the play of randomness in life, the strength of memory, and the effect of time on the soul. To the hip, or the unimaginative "modern" viewer this work will surely seem dated, mawkish, and flat; its just not got the zing, pizazz, or hype that pervades more contemorary flicks. Instead, this film is here for the long haul. The way I feel about it is, if films cant encompass the above-mentioned topics without earning a sour smirk these days from a trendy hipster, then what should our films be about?

I know, I know. You dont have to tell me. Car chases, breasts, and explosions. See you later.