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I watched an excellent doc called "White Light, Black Rain" directed by Steven Okazaki about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as related by the survivors. One thing that struck me was the similarity in editorial structure to Alain Resnais' incredible "Night and Fog," which was about the holocaust. Both films begin in a dispassionately innocuous fashion, engaging the intellect and slowly ramping up the emotional content to a climactic horror of imagery.
While Resnais doesn't interview survivors, the almost pastoral shots of the camps today set against the stills and film of the past provide a strong contrast. The shots from the past slowly increase in respect to graphic intensity as the film progresses in a deliberately measured manner. I found myself wondering if Okazaki didn't study Resnais technique and borrowed from both Night and Fog as well as Hiroshima, Mon Amour.
White Light, Black Rain holds the same, emotional arc for the viewer. Shots of modern Hiroshima and Nagasaki and interviews with survivors start the film. There's some stock footage of the post-attack damage, but they're the typical shots which are suitable for all audiences. Indeed, much of the footage comes from News on the March style newsreels.
The flick really hits home when it jumps to the day of the attack which begins with interviews of some of the individuals who were involved both in the Manhattan Project and select members of the crews who were involved in the bombing. These interviews provide a very short, transitional sequence before the stock footage of the bombings are shown. We've all seen this stock footage in the past and usually we view historical footage with a certain insulated, intellectual detachment. Coming so quickly on the heels of the interviews with the survivors, I felt myself viewing these shots with abject horror and I was experiencing the footage in totality for the first time because I was so emotionally involved with the people I'd met in the first 20 minutes of the film. They were under that hellish, pillar of fire. One woman was three blocks from ground zero. It provided a poignant epiphany and I don't think I'll ever be able to view that footage the same way again.
The aftermath is then explored more deeply after this sequence and these sequences are not for the faint of heart. Both stills and film footage documenting the injuries of the survivors, the carnage and corpses, sparing the viewer no details, is extremely difficult to watch. More so, because many of the shots are literally of the very survivors being interviewed. The U.S. Army comprehensively documented the effects of the bombings and the physiological effects on the survivors.
But this isn't the most painful part of the documentary. That would be reserved for the anguish the survivors feel when they talk of the deaths of their families that day and even more poignant, the amount of guilt they feel over the fact they survived.
This is a very moving film and I highly recommend it as required viewing for everyone to give them a sense of the reality of nuclear weapons.
While Resnais doesn't interview survivors, the almost pastoral shots of the camps today set against the stills and film of the past provide a strong contrast. The shots from the past slowly increase in respect to graphic intensity as the film progresses in a deliberately measured manner. I found myself wondering if Okazaki didn't study Resnais technique and borrowed from both Night and Fog as well as Hiroshima, Mon Amour.
White Light, Black Rain holds the same, emotional arc for the viewer. Shots of modern Hiroshima and Nagasaki and interviews with survivors start the film. There's some stock footage of the post-attack damage, but they're the typical shots which are suitable for all audiences. Indeed, much of the footage comes from News on the March style newsreels.
The flick really hits home when it jumps to the day of the attack which begins with interviews of some of the individuals who were involved both in the Manhattan Project and select members of the crews who were involved in the bombing. These interviews provide a very short, transitional sequence before the stock footage of the bombings are shown. We've all seen this stock footage in the past and usually we view historical footage with a certain insulated, intellectual detachment. Coming so quickly on the heels of the interviews with the survivors, I felt myself viewing these shots with abject horror and I was experiencing the footage in totality for the first time because I was so emotionally involved with the people I'd met in the first 20 minutes of the film. They were under that hellish, pillar of fire. One woman was three blocks from ground zero. It provided a poignant epiphany and I don't think I'll ever be able to view that footage the same way again.
The aftermath is then explored more deeply after this sequence and these sequences are not for the faint of heart. Both stills and film footage documenting the injuries of the survivors, the carnage and corpses, sparing the viewer no details, is extremely difficult to watch. More so, because many of the shots are literally of the very survivors being interviewed. The U.S. Army comprehensively documented the effects of the bombings and the physiological effects on the survivors.
But this isn't the most painful part of the documentary. That would be reserved for the anguish the survivors feel when they talk of the deaths of their families that day and even more poignant, the amount of guilt they feel over the fact they survived.
This is a very moving film and I highly recommend it as required viewing for everyone to give them a sense of the reality of nuclear weapons.
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