Rating: 
Summary: A remarkable depiction of remembering and forgetting
Review: Hiroshima, Mon Amour is the screenplay for the classic French film directed by Alain Resnais. This is one of the few screenplays I truly enjoy, as Hiroshima is a wonderful story about remembering and forgetting set in the context of post-nuclear war and love. True to the classic stream-of-consciousness style of Duras, this screenplay is a highly emotional account of a French woman's journey to Hiroshima to film an anti-war movie and the affair with a Japanese man that ensues. Throughout the course of the affair, the woman is struck with the memory of her German lover during WWII and the insanity that his death brought on. In many ways, this is Duras at her finest. She has an uncanny ability to take specific stories and bring them to a level of universality as far as human emotion and circumstance are concerned. This is a powerful and riveting tale that is not to be missed.
Rating: 
Summary: Deep Emotional Connection?
Review: I have been reading these glowing reviews and i can't help but wonder if we all saw the same film. "Hiroshima Mon Amour" is a tedious and pretentious film. So many of the past reviewers spoke of the deep emotional connection between the two lovers, but it seems they're seeing what they want to be there and not what is. All I saw was a clingy man badgering a woman until she spilled her guts and then he couldn't get her to stop talking if he wanted (and the scary part is he did not want her to stop). Another misconception I've read over and over is this film is about the suffering about BOTH the Riva and Okada characters, but it isn't. The Okada character tells his French lover his entire family died in Hiroshima and he was in the army. It was all over in 20 seconds. But Riva's character blathers on for nearly the rest of the movie about losing her German lover during the war. And this all brings me to the latent racism of the film: Only a European or an American could make a film with Hiroshima in the title, set it in Hiroshima and have one of the main characters a Japanese man who lost everyone dear to him in Hiroshima, but the movie isn't really about Hiroshima (though a lot of people seem to be under the impression it is equally about that as the French town of Nevers). Apparently Resnais and Duras felt the French character's story was more emotionally worthy and the Japanese character, despite the rich possibilities, should just act as a sounding board. Resnais could have really set the picture anywhere.. London, or Delhi, or St. Louis, or La Paz. At least then he wouldn't have been patronizing the experiences and pain of the Japanese victims of the atomic bomb. Overall I think all these 5 star reviews are by people who think they should like it because of the message(who could argue against an anti-war message), or because they've been told they're supposed to like it if they have any intelligence at all. I just find it incredible so many people got through this picture with a straight face.
Rating:
Summary: I watch it all the time
Review: I really love this film. The new DVD has a really good picture and nice features, the 2003 Riva interview has a lot of good insights. Hiroshima, Mon Amour is a very important film, for me, cos it shows the happiness in the midst of all the turmoil and heart-ache tha this world can give. You don't need to know french to watch this (though some things cannot be translated accurately) subtitles should not deter people from seeing this, you don't realize that they're there after ten minutes anyway. I won't bother with a plot sypnosis, they're plenty of them already on this site, but they two main characters are facinating and even a little inspiring to watch. The Japanese culture appears really intriguing in this film too, and the mix of the Frenchwoman's memories adds a glow to the film. I highly recommend this, it's very intense.
Rating: 
Summary: yyyyeeaahhh...
Review: i'm pretty sure i didn't get this movie. it was well acted and, at times, very heartbreaking.. but the ending caught me completely off guard. also, i can't really relate to being hopelessly in love with a japanese business man in hiroshima. maybe someday.
aaand i'm also going to have to disagree with most of the other reviewers on this board - this movie had the goofiest, most disjointed and unnerving soundtrack i've ever heard. sometimes it was spot on, and there were some very beautiful pieces.. intermixed with the.. uhh.. goofy, calliope, monkey-organ-grinder music. i don't understand the rationale behind scoring love scenes and scenes of regret and depression with that type of arrangement. no matter how serious the moments in the film get, all i can picture is shirley temple riding a carousel with a dwarf and three pigs in party hats.
but that's probably another example of me not getting it. i'm not saying this movie is bad - by all means, rent it or buy it or view it somehow and decide for yourself - but don't be too shocked if you're dumbstruck by the end.
Rating:
Summary: Finally its on DVD!
Review: Its about time someone released this historically important film on a digital format. The quality is as clean as you can get, it has several interviews, plus you get a thick booklet containing a roundtable discussion between all the New Wave directors, character synopsis, and so on. Criterion have really outdone themselves with this wonderful gem!
Rating:
Summary: le lisez!
Review: J'ai acheté ce scenario après beaucoup de voyant le film, duquel c'est chouette. Si on peut lire en français, il faut qu'on le lise en version originale. Mais j'ai trouvé que la version anglaise se tient bien avec sa traduction. Il y a des sentiments qui vous donnera une image spectaculaire de Hiroshima et, bien sûr, la mystique qui entoure la culture française, comment l'importance de memoire vous donne du chagrin, mais il est nécessaire qu'on l'ait, à continuer-pour la vie qui continue. Je sais que j'en écris dans un façon vague, l'histoire est un peu difficile dire, il faut qu'elle soit feutre.
Rating:
Summary: Rememberance and Forgetting..........Hiroshima Mon Amour
Review: Late last night I turned off the lights, layed in my bed, got comfortable, and took in one of my favorite films of all time, Hiroshima Mon Amour. I had seen the film before, and acknowledged its beauty, both visual and lyrical, but last night I really payed close attention, watched carefully, listened carefully, and really took this monumental film in. Now can I say that I have a better understanding of the film? No. In fact, I now have more questions than before. Upon first seeing this film, you will probably be in awe of the beauty of it all. The camera work is STUNNING, the score is one of the greatest ever written for film, and the dialogue is sheer poetry. Mysterious poetry. You'll find yourself wanting to know more about the film, for there are just so many unanswered questions. I could write for hours and hours and waste you wonderful readers' time about what I took from this short (90 minute) masterpiece, but I won't. I will however, tell what I think the point of it all was........... The point was to show the importance of memory, and of forgetting. When you see the incredible and powerful opening documentary montage on Hiroshima, you will think "why do we forget this?". Such a disasterous and enormous event has all but faded from our memories really. Thus Hiroshima is the perfect setting for this film, about two lovers, a French actress and Japanese (very French Japanese i might add, haha) who have a fling. The man wants the woman to stay, he is scared he'll forget about her if she leaves. The woman begins to open up about her tragic past in Nevers, France, a place she would love to forget, but cannot. This theme is carried through the entire film, through to the last scene in a hotel, where the woman breaks down and cries "I'll forget you in a few years, I know I will!" Thus they give eachother names, for they havent had names up to this point, Hiroshima and Nevers. Two places that they will NEVER forget, and hopefully will associate with their lover. This film is brilliant, beautiful, and DEEP. certainly not for every taste. It really makes one question why we forget things, and why we should remember things. I have not even BEGUN to tell about this film, you must see it for yourself. it truly is remarkable.
Rating:
Summary: A Haunting Dream of Love
Review: Not everyone will appreciate this highly subjective study of two emotionally wounded lovers in the aftermath of war, but please give it a chance. No other film captures the emotions and inner life of its characters like this. Resnais has such an amazing asthetic sense. Even the simplest images and words become deeply compelling and unforgetable under his direction. The script, by the celebrated erotic novelist Marguerite Duras, is also first rate.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant film on the illusion of never forgetting
Review: One of the prime examples of the French New Wave, a style of cinema that focused more on a personalized visual and experimental styles, with increased depths of feelings and exploration of themes, was Alain Resnais's debut effort, Hiroshima Mon Amour, which explored the effects of the atomic bomb and underscored the need to remember traumatic but profound memories for fear of them being repeated. There is a symbolic part in the movie of an arm enfolded over a body, all encrusted in frost. Soon, the frost turns to beads of water, which in turn is the sweat of two bodies together. Old passions reawoken, an intimate meeting of two cultures, and that depicts the love story between a French actress playing a nurse in a film on peace and a Japanese architect. Both, it turns out, are happily married, yet there's something wanting in the woman, and it all goes back to her traumatic past during the war, in her hometown of Nevers in Central France, Southeastish from Orleans, and situated on the Loire River. After a night in bed, the couple spend the remainder of the next day together. For the man, it's a desperate attempt to hold onto her, as she has to leave tomorrow for Paris. For the woman, it's an internal turmoil involving her past and her growing attraction to the man, to whom she confides in. But it's interesting to see the POV's of both. For the architect, Hiroshima became a part of history indelibly imbedded in the Japanese psyche. For the actress, Hiroshima meant "the end of war, the real end...[I was] stunned that they had dared, stunned that they succeeded, then the beginning of a new fear, followed by indifference, and also the fear of indifference." That is a source of bitterness to every Japanese, that the whole world rejoiced at the end of the war, including the actress. The initial half of the film is shot documentary style over the woman's narration, witnessing the legacy of Hiroshima fourteen years after the fact. For her, seeing the newsreel footage, the memorial sites built at detonation point, and the movies made of the victims, is being there. It is the footage from the films that is pretty grim, be it burns on people, peeling skin, closeups on deformed and scorched hands, many on children and infants, and bald patches on hair. "I felt the heat on Peace Square in Hiroshima. 10,000 degrees in Peace Square" she says, to which the architect's voice intones "No, you saw nothing in Hiroshima." He is more connected by the reality because he is Japanese, so how can she know, witness, or feel the concept of Hiroshima? She feels tied more by empathy, with the film she's making and her own experiences during the war. The testament to war and victimization is by her narration on why people are angry when they are deprived of their dignity and the necessities to survive: "It is the principle of inequality advanced by certain peoples against other people. By certain races against other races, by certain classes against other classes." Resnais tweaks the conventional linear narrative flow with one combining past, present, and future into one and using flashbacks reconciling time with memory. And some fluid camera shots panning down the Hiroshima concourses and streets are well executed. The actress's romantic past and newfound encounter mesh with her taking in the city: "Just as in love, there is the illusion that it can never be forgotten. So with Hiroshima, I had the illusion that I would never forget...just as in love." But can she forget the architect when she returns to her husband and children in France? Both leads, Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada, carry this movie. Lyrical, moody, thoughtful, and with brilliant cinematography utilizing the darkness of the cafes and nighttime streets, and the whiteness of the actress's dress. Riva herself exhibits a forlorn, credulous, frail, and ultimately vulnerable woman in the actress, while Okada's architect is stolid, sardonic, but also at breaking point when it looks as if he's going to lose her. Despite the long-trod thought of "never again," the actress's thoughts paints a bleak future of mankind unless it gives up its warlike savage ways: "It will happen again. 200,000 dead. 80,000 wounded in 9 seconds. ...10,000 degrees on Earth, 10,000 suns on Earth. The asphalt will burn. Chaos will reign. A whole city will be lifted off the ground, then drift down in ashes."
Rating:
Summary: that other person is a real moron
Review: Please...not a movie that she would sit home and watch on a Saturday night? That's because your intellect is more suited to "America's Funniest Home Videos." If you have never seen a movie with subtitles then you are missing out...not all good movies are in English. The plot wasn't confusing...it was rich and complex. The story is told through memories, and time is not linear in it. If you didn't understand that, then I'm sorry for you. Go watch tv.
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