Hiroshima, Mon Amour, by Resnais, is a film that chronicles the love affair between a French woman and Japanese man years after the bombing of Hiroshima, the man’s hometown. Because he was at war, and the woman was in France, neither of them actually witnessed the tragic bombing. However, its effects are still very present in Hiroshima when they meet there as strangers.
In her article “How history begets meaning…” Ropars-Wuilleumier makes the following statement: “A deformed hand, a destroyed eye, hair torn out…long is the list of materials which the narrative of Nevers drags out of Hiroshima’s museum and reconstructs into appeased, if acceptable, forms.” Within the film, the items Ropars-Wuilleumier lists become motifs; their new incarnations are only slightly less offensive than their origination in the ghastly aftermath of the bombing. For example, the burned, bloody hands of victims seen in the opening sequence are compared during the film to the Frenchwoman’s hands, which are bloodied as she claws to escape her cellar prison after being caught with a German lover.
Another parallel theme drawn between the bombings and the “present” segment of the film is loss. In the opening, the main characters’ voices are heard speaking. The woman tries to explain that she has seen Hiroshima, the reenactments and “museum” of horrors to which Ropars-Wuilleumier refers—and thus understands the tragedy. The man corrects her, saying that she may have seen but she can never understand. He does not believe she can comprehend the loss his city endured as a result of the bombings, and she avoids telling him the story of her German lover’s death because she feels he cannot understand.
Their loss is the same, the all-encompassing loss of a beloved city or beloved person, but until they become vulnerable and share it, each underestimates the other’s ability to understand. When the couple finally opens up to each other—though the woman is given more opportunity to truly go into detail about her grief—they are strongly bonded by loss.
In the last moment of the film, the couple is reunited after the woman leads the man on a long chase through the streets of Hiroshima. She cannot decide whether to stay or leave him. They exchange deep glances, saying, “Hiroshima—that’s your name.” “And yours is Nevers.” Though it is not clear whether she chooses to stay or go, the woman refers to her lover by name for the first time in the film. She calls him “Hiroshima”—the place they met, the place they fell in love, and the place where his loss is grounded and his heart continues to be. He calls her “Nevers,” the place where her heart still is, and the place where her great loss occurred. They love each other across divisions and boundaries, though their love is not the passionate type she felt for the German or the nostalgic type he feels for Hiroshima—it is a love borne of shared empathy.
