Hiroshima Mon Amour, Part 4

Fourth, “Hiroshima, mon amour” concerns the problem of anonymous memories.  Because memories are the remainders of our experience, the idea of an anonymous memory is counterintuitive.  How can what I experienced become anything other than mine?  Images are representations separated from the truth and from life.  Does not this separation imply an impersonality, if I am my experience, how can I be this memory which interrupts the continuity of experience?  What is more, if memories are bodies and she identifies with the bodies of these survivors of Hiroshima, these memories have a core, it is implied, which anyone can possess.  The image, the memory par excellence, calls anyone to possess this memory.  This memory belongs to no one.

The images she calls her own, of Hiroshima, negate the effect of the images of Nevers.  If Hiroshima is hers, then Nevers is also hers, as it is that of every survivor of Hiroshima—for example, him.  With such justification he assumes the role of her lost German lover, when she shares these memories with him.  But if Hiroshima is not hers, because it is merely images, reconstructed, than Nevers is not hers.  And we must becomes skeptical about the truthfulness of her memories.  She says, I lie and I tell the truth.  What reason would I have to lie to you?  She does not say, I am not lying to you.  We naively assumed, approaching the film that the title “Hiroshima, mon amour” refers to what she says to him.  But “Hiroshima, mon amour” means, my love, that is you, the viewer.   She is one women in 1000 women for him.  She is 1000 women in one for him.  He is both her present and her past and her future.  He is her Japanese lover and her dead German love.