How it started
One of the films I watched for a Film and Literature class I was taking in college was Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour. I hated it.
The 1959 film follows a 24-hour affair between Lui/Him (Eiji Okada) and Elle/Her (Emmanuelle Riva) in post-war Japan.
As the class progressed, we were headed toward a final assignment of analyzing one of the films we had watched that semester.
Because I am a genius, I decided that nobody would want to take on this film for their paper. If I wrote about Hiroshima Mon Amour, then I would most likely get a good grade because mine would be the only paper on the film.
Class members were given screening privileges and could schedule multiple viewings of their chosen films at their convenience.
(This was in the 1980s before the digital age, so we were actually watching it on film.)
These screenings allowed us to consider the films more carefully, make notes, gather quotes - the goal being for us to get what we needed to best argue whatever thesis we had devised for our papers.
But repeatedly watching the film gave me more than information for my paper. It allowed me - forced me - to contemplate the aftermath of war, to see the devastation of the atomic bomb. Desolation runs parallel with the drive of the survivors to rebuild and resume life while remembering who and what was lost.
