Hiroshima Mon Amour (The Criterion Collection)
by Alain Resnais
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DVD details
Actor: Bernard Fresson, Eiji Okada, Emmanuelle Riva, Pierre Barbaud, Stella DassasDirector: Alain Resnais
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-06-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Hiroshima Mon Amour (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Post-Modernist Pseudo-Intellectual Garbage
Summary: 1 Stars
Alain Resnais' 1959 adaptation Marguerite Duras' overrated play starring Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada regarding star-crossed lovers who by chance meet in the city of Hiroshima after World War II in the Pacific and have an 'intense relationship' over a short period of time. An utterly frivolous story which no amount of cinematic talent could redeem or add any substance to whatsoever due to the rather minimal literary talent of the playwright.
Duras' story is a typical example of the deconstructionist art which began in the 20th century and gained momentum after WWII with artistic works by 'artists' such as Duchamp, Warhol, Shoenberg, Phillip Glass, etc. The problem with such art is that it's nothing more than a reductio ad absurdium in art no different than an architect gloating over his masterpiece when the final structure is nothing more than the bare foundation of a building. As with the play, the screenplay is based on completely unsympathetic characters whose juxtapositions and chemistries are a mystery to everyone except the author of the work: an inside joke essentially! A French actress/former German collaborator in love with an inherently mysogenistic Japanese business man is perplexing if not non-sensical to say the least: who cares?! Somehow their presence in post-war Hiroshima is supposed to add to the sentimentality and nostalgia of the story because 100,000 Japanese were incinerated there during the war? Quite franly I have a lot more sentiment for the 11 million Chinese and countless Western civilians who were enslaved/massacred with impunity by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII. The play reeks of a 'understand them just for the sake that you must feel sorry for them' theme that invokes nothing but repulsion for the entire work. The 'profound meaning' of the work is absurdedly conveyed through nonsense dialogue amounting to no more than mono-syllabic lines that are as bare as they are meaningless to the likes of: Q: "Are you happy?" A: "Yes!" Q: "Why?" A: "I don't know" If this is what you consider insightful and creative artwork then this is the work for you.
Again, Marguerite Duras is a perfect example of the French post-modernist deconstructionist movement that is really not art at all any more than a human skeleton is a full presentation of the human body or spirit. A very overrated piece of fiction absorbed by the New Age pseudo-intellectual movement that aspires to deconstructionist ideals not for art's sake but merely for the sake of being different. Sorry, but one can replicate Michelangelo's David out of crap instead of marble to content himself as being artistic and different but, fundamentally, such artwork still amounts to nothing but crap no matter how you present it. For true works of literature from that period, I recommend Albert Camus' existentialist works and their adaptations to film instead of this snobbish garbage.
Description of Hiroshima Mon Amour (The Criterion Collection)
A cornerstone of French cinema, Alain Resnais' first feature is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. Utilizing an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award®-nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Resnais delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish, in this moody masterwork.An extraordinary and deeply moving film that retains much of its power since its original release in 1959, Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour is the story of a French woman (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese man (Eiji Okada) who become lovers in the city of Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb to end World War II in the Pacific. Written by Marguerite Duras and juggled, as if by wandering thoughts, in chronology and setting by Resnais, the film reveals the miserable and mortifying experiences of each character during the war and suggests the obvious healing properties of their relationship in the present. An emotional allusion or two can certainly be made with the more recent The English Patient, but nothing can quite prepare one for Resnais's extreme yet intuitively accessible experiments in fusing the past, present, and future into great sweeps of subjectively experienced memory. Yet audiences have never had trouble relating to this bold milestone of the French New Wave, largely because at its heart is a genuinely affecting, soulful love story. --Tom Keogh
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