Hiroshima, Mon Amour (II)

On a personal level, the chance meeting of two strangers turns into revisiting the singular moments in each of their lives. The sense of "boredom" on Emmanuelle's face intitially attracts Eiji to her. Eiji recognizes this boredom as one formed by the passing of the singular event of one's life. It is a boredom Eiji relates to. His singular event is coming home to a Hiroshima seared by the dropping of the first atomic bomb.

Emmanuelle empathizes with those who experienced the horrors of the blast with such force that Eiji starts to draw the past from Emmanuelle. It is a time Emmanuelle needs to revisit, but fears as well. The past has to be remembered in order not to be repeated; but remembering the past revisits her most painful memories. Emmanuelle does so only because she senses the same past in Eiji.

The searing event in Emmanuelle's life is her illicit love affair with a German soldier. His death and her subsequent humiliation and imprisonment (in her parents cellar) so embitter her, the people of Nevers assumed her mad. Her retaliation was to promise to never forget her lover's caress. Despite her efforts, her memory fades. These memories, and more to the point, that she has been unable to conciously retain (what she dreams about most, but thinks about least scene) anything more than a shell of these memoris is what Eiji shocks her into (re)realizing.

For his part, Eiji seeks to understand how Emmanuelle can be so torn by the destruction of Hiroshima without having experienced the event herself. Eiji witnessed the aftermath first hand, but even that was not enough to prevent his memories from also fading. And all that is left of the public memory are gift shops and museums. It's as if the newly rebuilt concrete Hiroshima is sufficient to press the horrific nature of the event (older sweeper in surgeons mask in front of New Hotel Hiroshima shot) into the past. For Eiji, his singular event is behind him, despite the world's best efforts to never forget.

Even if everyone understood the enormity of remembering, Emmanuaelle knows it's impossible to remember in the face of time. References to worms, insects, dogs, flowers and children in the days after the blast, and the symbolic rebirthing in the museum (children center screen under posters scene) only add to the despair of eventual loss of all memory of man's destructive nature and the evitable repetition of similiarly horrific events. New generations will both complete the loss of memory and experience new horrors because of it.

Emmanuaelle states: The ultimate enemy is the "principle of inequality." The question is: Can this be done without the aid of memory?

I don't want to forget that fantastic opening "rebirthing" scene. Both Emmanuelle and Eiji are "born again" as only two people with similarly searing singular events in their lives can. Only then can they "escape" their convenient existences (both "happy" with spouses) and relate to each other as equals.