Watched Oppenheimer, and then had to watch or rewatch a few more.
Oppenheimer (Nolan, 2023) – Don't have much to say about this one, except that I liked it enough that I now have to rewatch Interstellar to see if it's still my favorite Nolan film. 7/10
Hiroshima (Sekigawa, 1953) – The images of the aftermath in Hiroshima are certainly troubling, they aim at being hyper realistic, but they nonetheless have a surreal aspect that could be linked to some of Roy Andersson's work. That's a big chunk of the film and it is impressive and interesting. Too bad that I feel that most of the film's value is lost in its intention. 5.5/10
I Live In Fear (Kurosawa, 1955) – Maybe with better acting this could have been more efficient. As it is, with the clown job by Mifune, it feels like a waste. Apart from a few moments in the last 20 minutes, there's really not much to take away from this sad tale. Kurosawa took a second jab at the atomic fear in Dreams, again a little over-the-top, but much more interesting to me. 4/10
Black Rain (Imamura, 1989) – I'll just comment on a banal scene where a few men are mocked because they need to stay fishing instead of working because of their degrading health. One of them notes that everybody forgets about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and are content with a few anti-war manifestations, somehow erasing the reality and concreteness of the events (that's a very postmodernist reading of reality, we're somewhere in Baudrillard territory). The rejection/erasure of reality is the very core of In the Realm of the Senses (Imamura's masterpiece), but here it's really just a timid and somewhat sad, or rueful, social commentary by the director. Made more than 40 years after the bombings, the film is about the long game and the fading memory of the events. The black rain's victims, not knowing when or how they'll be affected by the trauma might be underused here as a metaphor for the long-term effect on the Japanese society, the result certainly could have been more effective (the black rain victims, apart from those living directly at ground zero, were still not recognized as survivors of the bombings when the film was made). The film is still somewhat poignant, its oversentimentalist approach might turn a few off, but it has a few moments where meaning breaches through the sentimentality. The images of Hiroshima are not as haunting as in Sekigawa's film even though in many ways similar, just without their quasi-poetic quality. 6/10
200 000 Phantoms (Périot, 2007) – Experimental short, very simple but brilliant idea (won't say more). I just wish the work on sound was as well-thought as the montage (it's mostly just a Current 93 song). 7/10
The Atom Strikes! (1945) – Probably the most disgusting film I've ever seen. The proud description of the destruction is vomitory. Comments about the blasted off Red Cross hospital “which although damaged, never ceased function”, and about Hiroshima's zoning-less urban planning “with no apparent regard for the safety of the civilian population” (are you f...ng kidding me?), taking the American audience for the dumbest people imaginable, have the absolute opposite effect they originally aimed for, and really gets the hatred boiling. Unratable.
Hiroshima mon amour (Resnais, 1959) – The first 16 minutes of this film are pure cinematographic bliss, a perfect blend of Resnais and Duras' artistic genius. It's like Nuit et brouillard had a one night stand with Aurélia Steiner, and it would have been a top-5 films of all time had it not only been the introduction to a more uneven and “conventional” story. The whole film is still a masterpiece, Resnais' then obsession with the act of memory meets Duras' unforgiving impossibility to “tell”, and to “show”. You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing. The writing is so close to Duras' work, and yet Resnais is everywhere in this film. It's a feat just as impressive as what he's done with the works of Robbe-Grillet and Laborit in my two favorite films of his. A short film (90 minutes) that overproduces meaning and interpretative paths. Truly a texte de jouissance in the purest sense, that would here deserve a short thesis. 9/10
H Story (Suwa, 2001) – There is few, but important, elements of reflexivity in Hiroshima mon amour, in the tension for example between real images of the events and some clips from Sekigawa's film (the simple inclusion of these images in Resnais' film was reflexive in itself, but they are also used to feed the reflection about the need/impossibility to recall a traumatic event). Suwa here pushes these elements to their breaking point. H Story is a(bout a) remake of Resnais' film (and maybe even more so of Duras' screenplay and ideas) in which the woman, an actress who came to Hiroshima to make a movie about peace in the original film, is in this one in Hiroshima to shoot a remake of Hiroshima mon amour. It's obviously an auto-reflexive work, and it vacuums in other art forms, also incapable of representing what's unrepresentable (the author who doesn't know if he should include the man he wants to write about in his actual text, the sculptures at the Museum as abstract representations of Hiroshima). Suwa uses the materiality of the film itself, the audibility (and most often through inaudibility) of the sound of the film itself, and the dissonance between one another, to illustrate the impossibility of the representation (which in the narrative culminates in Suwa's abandon of the project). The film seems less and less about the bombings or Hiroshima, and more and more about itself and cinema, but Resnais' film did somewhat the same and felt more and more about everything that was wrong in France during the war: the Nazi collaboration, the way the women were treated after liberation (the “tondues”). Though Suwa is clearly more interested in Duras' ideas and approach, he ends his film on a soundless flashbang (again, using the materiality of the film), a metaphoric act of memory, and a call to caution, echoing Resnais' ending of his own film with the chilling ironic wordplay “Never in France”. Also, I have to note that Béatrice Dalle is absolutely perfect in this, amazing in her first scenes of the remake, and then realizing that it is useless to try and do this film, and getting bored with it – too bad she is surrounded by non-actors, but still, Suwa does very good, and their broken communication works very well in the themes of the film too. Don't watch this film unless you've seen and loved Hiroshima mon amour, and unless you like slow paced films, and unless you like self-reflexive art... If you don't, you'll hate it, but otherwise, this is one heck of a film. 9.5/10
