Witnessing Trauma & Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

"Little Boy" --the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. "Fat Man" --dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945.

Outline

Hiroshima mon amour General introduction Seeing and Forgetting Cross-Cultural Communication Cross-Cultural Positioning

Hiroshima mon amour: Main Question (1)

What is the film about? •-- The atomic destruction of Hiroshima or •-- the psychological consequences of World War II?

Director： Alain Resnais  Script ： Marguerite Duras Actors： Emmanuelle Riva   　　　 Eiji Okada

General Introduction: Background

1959 – the beginning of French New Wave; also the year when Godard's Breathless, Truffaut's The 400 Blows were released.

Resnais –By 1959 Resnais had produced a lot of documentaries; e.g. 1955 Night and Fog, which Godard has called a documentary on the “memory of Auschwitz.”

After seeing the documentaries already produced on Hiroshima, Resnais changed his mind, asking Duras to write the script for him.

General Introduction: Impossibility of Historic representation

The pain and horror of such events cannot be portrayed in a documentary manner;

Such representation is possible only if it is mediated through human experiences of love and death.

Plot -- the sexual tryst between the French actress, who is married, and her Japanese lover, an architect who is also married,

General Introduction: Structure and Plot But the story goes deeper as they dig up her

past, and they have a mutual recognition. five panels (not labeled as such in the film

itself): Prologue, Night and Morning, Day, The Café by the River, and Epilogue.

General Introduction: Structure and Plot (2) five panels (not labeled, as such in the

film itself): Prologue, Night and Morning, Day, The Café by the River, and Epilogue.

Starting Questions What does the beginning shots of the film

mean? And the opening sequence? "You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing," "I

saw everything.... Every thing." What does she see?

He is also not a witness…

“Were you here in Hiroshima?” Of course not.

…But my family was in Hiroshima. I was off fighting the war.

What she sees: Hospital with patients averting their

faces, documentaries, newsreel, feature films, report on the consequences, Hiroshima park and museum

Hiroshima at the present time:

The film, the parade and souvenirs commodification of disaster

What she sees and does not see/understand…

Re. Hiroshima: the visualization and objectification of

memories – museum, park, newsreel, and a film about "peace.“

No “witnessing” of the actual event

What she sees and does not see/understand…

Her personal past: “The moment of his death actually

escaped me.” “I see my life. Your death.” Madness: “…like intelligence. You can't

explain it. Just like intelligence. It comes over you. consumes you and then you understand. But when it's gone. you no longer understand it at all.”

Remembering Bodies

Bodily memory, or enactment of one’s memory. (Caruth -- bodies in sex = bodies covered by atomic ashes)

Narration –about the past and then to the past “you.”

Is forgetting a betrayal of the past?

[marble] 1:00 “I think it was then that my hatred left me. I don't scream anymore. I become reasonable.”

“Freedom from madness is thus equated with the forgetting that began her sane seeing and knowing, a freedom that is fundamentally a betrayal of the past” (Caruth 33)

Hiroshima mon amour: Main Question (2)

Cross-Cultural Communication

What does Hiroshima mean to the two characters [both “foreigners” to the past traumas]?

Director： Alain Resnais  Script ： Marguerite Duras Actors： Emmanuelle Riva   　　　 Eiji Okada

1) Personal Level: Lui (Him) and Elle (Her)

Both traumatized; Elle:

A flashback of her boyfriend when the man’s fingers twitch.

“I was never younger than I was in Nevers.”

Nevers– she dreams of the most, but never goes back to.

1) Personal Level: Self-Destructive?

You're destroying me. You're good for me.

I have time. Please, devour me.

Deform me to the point of ugliness.

Why not you? Why not you in this city

and in this night so like other cities and other nights

you can hardly tell the difference?

I beg of you. You have such beautiful skin.

Self-Destructive vs. Alive and Oblivious of the Past

Torn between the Past, the Present and future forgetfulness

Saying Goodbye to both the Past or the present?

Walking thru’ Hiroshima, with flashbacks of Nevers.

Elle: I consigned “you” to oblivion.

Lui: “We’re sad about leaving each other”

2) Collective Level:

00:20 To meet in Hiroshima. That doesn’t happen everyday.

Lui: What did Hiroshima mean to you in France?.

Elle: The end of the war.

Lui: I mean completely.

Elle: Astonishment that they dared do it, and astonishment that they succeeded. And the beginning of an unknown fear for us as well.

What is this film you're in?.

It's a film about

peace.

Historical Re-Inscription and Objectification

“Just as the French understand the event of Hiroshima as the end of their own war, so the perception of Hiroshima itself, from the perspective of an international history, turns the very actuality of catastrophe into the anonymous narrative of peace” (Caruth 29)

Individual histories consigned to collective one.

“Listen to me.”

“The knowledge of forgetting is not something owned, that is, but something addressed to another, addressed not simply as a fact, but as a command—”Listen to me”—and as a question—”Why deny the obvious necessity for memory?”

Or Self-Othering in

Casablanca

Hiroshima mon amour: Main Question (3): Cross-Cultural Positioning

Between He and She

1) BeginningHe—for her: “completely Japanese”She – for him: “a thousand women in one.”

2) The sharing of personal memories Stay in Hiroshima 1:11 “He's going to walk towards me.

He's going to take me by the shoulders” devour me

The ending:

What does it mean to call each other by the name of their cities?

For next week: Obasan

A story about the Japanese’ experience of WWII, both in Canada and in Japan. (Three generations, Issei, Nisei, Sansei.)

Protagonist, Naomi + Stephen (3rd), separated from her mother before the war against Japan started; experience two fold relocation (from Vancouver to Slocan to Alberta)

lives with their uncle and aunt (Obasan), visited by another aunt (Nisei)

The present: Naomi: a timid and unsocialable school teacher.

The uncle’s yearly ritual on 8/9 ( 1951 the bombing of Nagasaki)

For next week: Obasan (2)

The death of the uncle brings Naomi back to Obasan’s house, the question about the mother arises again.

Aunt Emily’s package Naomi starts to remember the past;

The present moment –Obasan’s package (with the grandmother’s letter)

Our focus: the mother’s silence and final communication

Trauma and silence the avenues of silence are the avenues

of speech “There is a silence that cannot speak;

there is a silence that will not speak.” Memories of trauma and construction

of traumatized identity

Works Cited

Caruth, Cathy. “Duras, Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour.” Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. John Hopkins UP, 1996: 23-56.