The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film by Barker Jennifer Lynde;

Author:Barker, Jennifer Lynde;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

THE RADICAL BEAUTY OF THE BODY

Hiroshima repeats the focus on surreal, uncanny objects found in Night and Fog, but with an even more condensed approach to the encyclopedic documentation of atrocity featured in that film. Visually the evidence is portrayed objectively: bits of hair, a “bouquet” of bottle caps, photographs of injured bodies, reconstructions, models of bombs and atoms, lists of information, fragmented and distorted objects, twisted metal and flesh. This documentation of museum objects provides, according to Elle, “the explanations, for lack of anything else.” But they do not convey the same sense of magnitude as in Night; rather they focus on fragments and vulnerability. Instead of a mountain of hair, there is hair from one person, placed in a case. The hair is shaped as if from a head, but without a face. The objects have been sorted and organized, memorialized and contained since the war, but they continue to produce a surreal effect due to their modernist abstraction. The bottle caps melded together are described as a “bouquet” and the fragments of flesh in containers “as if still alive” offer a more individual, but no less traumatic vision of suffering; rather they emphasize the loss of identity—though more human, they are less recognizable than shoes or hair. Their abject nature demonstrates a similar deformation of humanity; the burns and mutations caused by the bomb echo those inflicted by the Nazis.

An especially noteworthy aspect of Hiroshima that sets it apart from the earlier antifascist films in this study is the way it focuses on bodies and erotic contact rather than faces. The first moving image of the film is of limbs intertwined and covered in ash. This is a historically transitional image, leading us from the burnt bodies of Night and Fog into a post-war recuperation. Ash falls on their skin, but then begins to glitter. The image transforms into sweaty human arms, one pair darker than the other. We cannot tell yet if they are united in love or suffering. Flesh holds flesh, cradling the very idea of the body as desirable, a body that is, we discover, not suffering and shaking alone (as are the bodies damaged in the war) but united with another in pleasure. The first minutes of the film also introduce a dialectical approach to the body: visually we see two bodies joined as close as they can be, but simultaneously we hear them voice diametrically opposed opinions. As with other aspects of the film, two elements are juxtaposed with each other and yet a unity is advocated; not a fascist unity featuring one thought for two people, but a complex unity that balances individuality and disagreement with affection and wit.

Even in the hospital, as the camera moves into rooms and up to people, all who we see turn away from us, and we are left with the language of bodies—their landscapes and gestures—quite different than that of faces. These images are interspersed with shots of empty city streets and buildings and it seems that nothing looks back at us here.

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