Hiroshima Mon Amour Analysis

The opening scene of Hiroshima Mon Amour starts off with Him and Her embracing each other. Their bodies are joined and the spectator cannot tell where His and Her body begins and where it ends. Under the enfolding ashes of the devastating nuclear bomb they become one, even though they are from different cultures with different values and beliefs. Despite the variances in culture, both of them share the trauma and anxiety of World War II. The subsequent scenes have a documentary aspect about the consequences of the atomic bomb to establish a background and feelings He and She cannot easily break away from. The Japanese man is composed, confident, and questioning. He is an architect of a city (Hiroshima) that was razed to the ground. She is sentimental, “defeated” and nice-looking.

Although the obi is not fastened in the right way, she is wearing the Japanese dress elegantly, confidently as if wearing yukata would be as natural for her as using European clothes. Both the man and woman are involved in each other’s culture. Though the movie is black and white, for that very reason the true colors cannot be seen. The Japanese man is always wearing dark, black clothes compared with the French woman’s light-colored, white dresses. Even the color of their clothes are complementary of each other as they are one half of the other, together they are composed as a whole. Clash of cultures materializes in the scenes representing the two cities (Hiroshima and Nevers). The images of the destroyed Hiroshima with its deformed survivors contrasts the rebuilt Hiroshima with the neon lights, big buildings, automobiles, infrastructure, over and above its gift shops with English signs. Rejuvenated Hiroshima differs from Nevers, the French town with the moorland, bare trees, small dilapidated barns, the ruins and the cellar, which, together, evoke the images of the destroyed Hiroshima in the