nan | 楠木

For a film of such fame, Hiroshima Mon Amour is surprisingly engaging, even after nearly 50 years since its making. Like all great films, it is many things to many people – and I don’t even know where to begin to describe what it means to me. Suffice to say, I found it to be a tragically devastating love poem.

The entire film is filled with an emotional intensity, from the opening sequence where the lovers engage in a philosophical dialog of love and war, to the flashbacks where the tragedy of the girl’s first love is recounted, to the last hours of the last night in Hiroshima (which seem to be never-ending) where every minute is torture to the couple in the impossible love. And what is love, really? Is every love destined to be forgotten? Should we even try to remember? The film offers no answers, and chooses instead to let the audience ponder (painfully) at such questions.

Again, I find myself unable to express in words what the film is. Perhaps just like any poem, it is meant to be felt rather than analyzed.

8/10