Saturday, January 14, 2006
FORGETTING/REMEMBERING
Today I saw Alain Resnais' great film of the French New Wave
This is a great film for many reasons. One cannot ignore its timing just 14 years after the Second World War. For those of us who were there then, this has an added impact as it certainly did in its own time.
I do not think that I saw it then. I was just out of school a year and away from the art houses and free time of that part of my life.
It is not too much of a spoiler to say that it surprises us with the discovery that the French woman having an affair with a Japanese man has as much to forget as her lover has.
He is the son of a lost Hiroshima family; vaporized. She is one of the young French women who took a German lover and was shamed and vilified at the end of the war; shaved head, isolation, all that.
The whole thing unwinds with great cinematic control. A lot of this has to be the work of Margeurite Duras who wrote the script and collaborated with Resnais in making the film.
It is beautiful to watch. Another example of the power of black and white film to engage and involve.
There is a lot of heavy lifting for the film critics and scholars here. I will simply say that it was deeply enjoyable even when some of the images, early on, are horrifying.
The Criterion restoration is flawless.
This is a 5 out of Netflix5 for one of the best NYTimes 1176 Best Films.
