Rating: 
Summary: A Great Film
Review: Forget the remarks of the idiot below. If you fall into the general camp of obvious lame brains such as that piffling specimen (who obviously 'missed the point') then yes, indeed, steer clear. I happened to think it is one of the most remarkable films I've seen. Watch the DVD, listen to the commentary and read the accompanying booklet for further elucidation- and expose the turnip head below for what he is.
Rating:
Summary: "PERFECT LOVE"
Review: FORGET, everything else about this movie - just experience it as a love story. A still unique conception through the eyes of Alain Resnais. To say more about this man would trivialize, he is exceptional.It's a chance meeting between two people of different cultures, both have been hurt [devastated?] by the inhumanities of war, understandably there is a connection, an understanding. There is a romance, they attempt to exorcise their demons. As the voyeur, you are changed by this confessional. It's a movie in rare black and white, avant-garde for 1959 - and now! [You'd have to visit the out-of the way Art House to see this product, fortunately it's currently on tape - DVD would be sublime]. Duras wrote from the heart, another - never seen work "Summer 10:30pm" is well worth visiting. But this earlier work remains fresh, like the shadows of the victims of the nuclear blast, for the fortunate viewer of this work, memory remains indelible. A brilliant meeting of Duras and Resnais.
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Summary: "The interpretation is all yours" - Resnais
Review: Fourteen years has past since the catastrophic consequences of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when a Frenchwoman, Elle (Emmanuelle Riva), and a Japanese man, Lui (Eiji Okada), find each other in an intense love affair. In the morning when they wake up, Lui wants to meet Elle again, but Elle insists that they do not meet again. However, Lui cannot stay away from Elle as he wants to learn more about her. In reminisce Elle tells her story of the war, which she has hidden for 14 years, to Lui. In the process she is reminded of her current love affair with him which is as impossible as her first love affair during World War II. Hiroshima mon amour is a powerful film that was intended to be a documentary, but after many turns it turned into a featured film. In this film Resnais succeeds in creating an atmosphere of emotional turmoil through the characters as they recall the dark past. This turmoil generates a genuine sense of uncertainty for the future, and I could not agree more with Rohmer as he commented by saying that the film "has a very strong sense of the future, particularly the anguish of the future." This anguish can be related to several factors, but Resnais leaves the audience to make final interpretations of his brilliant cinematic experience.
Rating:
Summary: A perfect beauty... and a wound
Review: Heart- and soul breaking. This book has a very symbolic meaning for me. It is one of the first books I had ever read in French, also the book that once brought me and my former fiance together. (To make the melodrama complete, I am a Bosnian refugee who has lived many years in Germany, so the part about love, war and German relationships applies as well, tiens).
Rating:
Summary: A perfect beauty... and a wound
Review: Heart- and soul breaking. This film (and the book) have a very symbolic meaning for me. It was one of the first books I had ever read in French, also, the film and the book once brought me and my former fiance together. (To make the melodrama complete, I am a Bosnian refugee who has lived for many years in Germany, so the part about love, war and German relationships applies as well, tiens).
Rating: 
Summary: WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION?
Review: HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (Criterion) is a love affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect that's set against memories of Hiroshima's atomic aftermath. But more than anything, Alan Resnais' first feature is a visual tone poem to life, love and death. Long acknowledged as a foundation stone of French cinema, this film continues to gather gravitas by scholars, critics and others who define and dwell within film culture. From the perspective of the 21st Century, this emotionally heavy story is sometimes pretentious -- mainly because we have become inured to the raw aftershock of Hiroshima and have little fresh experience of just how devastating a real weapon of mass destruction actually is. Underlying Resnais' film is our profound human need to understand the flow of history; that is, our true identity in time and space. Originally released in 1959, this painful love story still has the power stimulate reflection and emotion.
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Summary: French Cinema meets Art
Review: Hiroshima mon amour is a unique film. This is the grafting of cinema technique with literature. In a unique collaboration between director Alain Resnais and novelist Margaurite Duras one of the truly landmark films of the 20th Century was born. This is a story about beginnings and endings about rebirth following tragedy. Moreover this is a story about memory. Fifteen years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a film crew arrives to make a film about peace. The actress in this film meets and has an intense affair with a Japanese man she meets in a bar on the night before she is to return to France. In a startling series of flashbacks we learn of her love for a German soldier that left her ostracized in her native Nevers, France. The story, which all takes place in a twenty four hour period is striking because of its emotional impact. The atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima and the WWII romance destroyed the womans life. Now is the time to grow and to be reborn. Rebirth takes place through a confrontation with our memories of the past. A facing of the things that made us what we are. This is the sense the viewer takes from this film. The Criterion DVD has an excellent transfer of the print which is presented in its original monural sound. The extras on the disc deserve a look. There is an excellent commentary by film historian Peter Cowie that helps to explain the marriage of film and literature between Resnais and Duras while offering some anecdotal technical information. Also included are vintage interviews with Alain Resnais and star Emmanuelle Reve. A 2003 interview with Reve is a highlight of the disc and should not be missed. The annotated selections of the script are also worth a brief look. Anyone interested in the history of film should do themselves a favor and view this important film classic.
Rating: 
Summary: A simple thought on "Hiroshima Mon Amour"
Review: Hiroshima Mon Amour is the first foriegn film with sub-titles I've watched. I watched it for my film class. It was very slow, but the music helped push it along. The music helped set the mood for the graphic images it portrayed. I found the plot confusing, all the changes in time made it hard to follow. It was like a documentary gone bad. I think the love story made it cheaper, especilally since it was an affair. I did like however, the tie ins with the affair and the bombing. That was creative, although not a film I would sit at home and watch on a Saturday night.
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Summary: Remembrance, pain, and love.
Review: Hiroshima, Mon amour is a film that explores the idea of memory: what is to forget, and what is to remember? What is experience and what is reconstruction? Do we have total control over these notions, and do we need to have control over them? With the Hiroshima bombing tragedy as the layout of the film, Resnais and Duras mock the European (and maybe the Japanese themselves through the museum and other memorial things that they built) understanding of what had really happened there. Universally, the story then focus on the conflict of understanding that the Riva character is suffering in when she gets herself involved with the Okada character, thus revealing her past to him as they both struggle into creating their definition of what love is. Is it enough to compare one's suffering to others' when their sufferings are more 'horrific' in nature? Not only that this film tries to answer this question but it also brings out lots of other questions on our common humanity. A complex and very intellectual film, but one should be warned (or should be aware of its implication from Resnais and Duras) of the passive nature of time from the Riva character's subjectivity too when watching the film.
Rating:
Summary: The Power of Love
Review: Hiroshima, mon amour is a strong story about the power that love has. Our main character, Nevers, is an actor in Hiroshima where she meets a stranger and begins to open up to him. His interest in her grows, and eventually he uncovers her past full of pain and anguish caused by a fateful and fobidden love. At the end we are left with the feeling of how love has been so powerful and so destructive to Nevers, with the main line of the movie capturing it all "Tu me tue, tu me fait du bien" (you kill me, you bring me good) Anyone who watches this will be absolutely brought to see and appreciate the power and awsome force of love, and we can see as Nevers, that hope for a new love and life always comes in the form of a stranger. One of the greatest films ever done!
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