In the opening sequence of Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour, we are faced with various shots of intertwining amorphous flesh, dissolving into each other and lacking any clear identity or establishing marks. This lack of conceptual grounding for the viewer reflects a parallel obliteration of identity for the lovers. The act of love thus serves as a temporary escape from the world of understanding, memory, and reason. The self is forgotten, and in its place a feeling of unity with something other than the self is obtained. This destruction of self and identification with someone else serves as a key theme in the characters' search to find and preserve meaning.

The idea of losing identity appears throughout the film. The characters are anonymous; they are not given names and so cannot be picked out as particular individuals. They lost themselves at the moment of their tragedy, and it is not until the final scene that they each gain a name. Their anonymity is stressed by the black and white film, which creates a coldness and distance that makes it difficult to approach the characters and identify with them. Their speech, often slow and gloomily detached, gives the unearthly feeling of the characters being lost and not fully intact. Similarly, the simple background cause the characters to appear as if they do not belong in any specific place in the world.

The tragedy that each has endured - the woman in the death of her lover, the man in the wake of the Hiroshima bombing, reflects the loss of something intimately connected to them, and leaves the victims in a state of spiritual amputation. The woman describes how she was unable to tell apart the dead body of her lover and her own body, which indicates both her unity with the soldier and the emotional death she felt at his actual death. The negative loss of identity at this moment gives rise to the compulsion to seek a positive loss of identity. When she tells her Japanese lover, "You devour me. You are good for me... You destroy me," the language of destruction implies the negation of the self and preservation of something else (in this case, the man). The problem with the initial trauma, however, is that it is precisely a real destruction of oneself and one's world that does not lead to any preservation. It is an empty loss, and hence leaves a gaping hole that desires to be filled.

This search for reintegration is frustrated by the conflict between two opposing tendencies. On the one hand, the tragic loss demands that they remember what was lost and preserve that memory. In its wish not to be destroyed, its spirit calls for the constant recollection of tragedy and horror. At the same time, maintaining such faithfulness to an injustice impairs their ability to act in the world. There is an opposing drive towards forgetting, towards losing one's wounded self and rejoining society in the necessity of living a normal life. It seems as if these two cannot be reconciled, for one cannot be devoted to the past while living in the present, and one cannot live in the present without betraying the significance of one's past. Struggling with this psychological discord, the characters in Hiroshima aim to resolve the conflict by assuming the burden of the other. The revelation of private tragedy turns it into a shared tragedy, and in its very telling reduces the focused pain into something manageable. The isolation that each individually feels leads to the creation of a shared world of pain, one which in its creation allows for both the preservation and the relieving externalization of one's tragic story.

The montage sequence in the Hiroshima museum and the footage of the Hiroshima aftermath serve as the visual externalization of the man's story. This accompanies the woman's verbal expression of remembering everything through what she has seen and what she knows about Hiroshima. He negates her statements by saying that she saw nothing. His language is only capable of pure negation and reaction - parroting but reversing her statements to indicate no museum, nothing to weep over, nothing to remember. Even though their speech is opposed in this way, the actual situation is reversed. He is the one who remembers everything, who knows Hiroshima. She is only a foreign visitor who could not possibly share in the tragedy of him and his people. What he knows, then, is the unspeakable, a knowledge which is not expressible in terms of sight or memory, but has a value which would be destroyed in its very utterance. That is why he can only speak in negating her words, for her knowledge has come about through mediation and is therefore expressible through the mediating force of language. The paradoxical situation here is that even as he denies her claims of knowing Hiroshima, their verbal exchange reflects a situation in which she holds the memory and he embraces forgetting. There is an actual giving up of the tragedy on his part as he allows it to be shared with her, for the more she claims she has seen, the more the man is able to express not seeing. The move from the silent unspeakable state of her ignorance and his knowledge to the linguistic state of her claiming knowledge and his disavowal of it produces a sharing of tragedy. She effects this transfer of the burden of memory by taking it from him and allowing it to be externalized through verbal expression. Simultaneous with this linguistic exposure is the visual montage itself, showing the horrible scenes of maimed victims and complete destruction. The not-seeing that the man wishes to hold on to is constantly being challenged by the scenes being presented to the viewer, for in this way the events of Hiroshima become speakable and seeable, allowing the woman (and through her, the viewer) to share in his tragedy.

The focus on Hiroshima and its events takes place in a space owned by the woman, from the opening scene at her hotel room to the site where her movie is being shot. The narrative events thus focus on the way in which Hiroshima is able to belong to the woman. After the protest parade, the movie shifts to concentrate on the sharing of the story of Nevers, and how it grows to be associated with the man. This sharing begins (like in the previous instance) in their moment of love, when they are essentially united in their complete nakedness. This time taking place at the man's apartment, the unfolding of her story of young love and loss occupies the majority of the film (and moves on to other more neutral spaces).

Her story is one that has never been told, one which she did not believe could be told. The fourteen years after her trauma are ones she spent searching for an impossible love, looking for someone who could take the place of her German soldier in her mind and hence act as his reincarnation. Her identification of the Japanese man with the German explains why she is able to tell her story for the first time to him. When she is addressing him, he is not seen as alien because she tightly weaves together the identity of the German soldier and of this Japanese architect. Even in the beginning, his twitching hand indicates a state of sleep which reminds her of the German's hand at his death. She also tells the story as if the Japanese man was in fact the soldier, a bizarre example of mistaken identity which he himself introduces, "When you are in the cellar, am I dead?" referring both to himself and (in the absurdity of the question), to the soldier. She tells him how she cries and longs for him (the Japanese man), and calls out his German name. Later on as she tells of her failed meeting with the German, the climax of her grief is expressed by the oneness she feels with his dead body and her complete sense of loss. She exclaims, "He was my first love!" and is quickly slapped by the man. This marks a turning point in the narrative, for it marks a more genuine interaction between the characters. Earlier in the cafe, the low-key lighting is focused entirely on her, and the man is hidden completely in shadow. His significance is reduced and she is allowed to tell her story as if she is alone. After a certain point in the story, she abandons the identification of the man with the German and refers to him as "he" and not "you".

This movement is in part a growing separation from her pain, as it allows her to speak of it without needing to live in it at each moment. However, this is also what provoked the violent reaction in the man, because her language no longer involved him in the narrative. His need to feel special is manifest throughout the film, for he expresses great excitement in being the only one who knows her story. He is also curious about being her "first Japanese", and questions her about the frequency of her affairs. At the set of her movie, he stresses how much she makes him feel a longing for love, and he wants her to say that she feels the same way. His interest in Nevers stems from the idea that he almost "lost" her there, indicating his current attitude of possession. A similar desire to be valued is manifest in the woman, who wants him to admit that he gave up his day for her when they go to his house. When she is walking away from the cafe in the street, she desperately wants him to show his devotion by coming to grab her. All of these reflect a selfish attitude towards other people, in that others are appreciated only because they make you feel valuable and because they serve a symbolic role in alleviating suffering.

Throughout most of the film, the characters are trapped in their own invented world of discourse, and all other people and events are essentially nonexistent. The slow repeated dissolves indicate a leisurely pace, where time does not seem to be marching forward. The isolation from the simple mise-en-scene indicates their existence in a separate private space. The lack of substantive plot events helps to abstract away any attempt at storytelling from the events taking place in the film, but instead focuses on the storytelling of the characters from within the film. Themes of invention and imagination regarding memory and the need to forget often resurface. Besides raising the problem of being able to have a veridical account of events, it also indicates the subjective nature of perception and hints at the problem of idealistic solipsism.

At the end of the film, the characters start to interact with others for the first time, which indicates both a certain recovery and a remaining problem. The two key interactions are with a Japanese man speaking token phrases of broken English, and an old Japanese woman speaking Japanese. Neither of these are in the dominant language of the film, which indicates their externality relative to the world created prior to their interference. The fact that these other people interact with the characters at all reminds us of the existence of an outside world, but the alien language maintains the distance between that world and the characters' private world. The first moment where others are introduced is when the man slaps the woman and we see rapid shots of the cafe patrons looking up. The loud sound contrasts sharply with the whispering and gentle tone before this moment, and it marks the first time their identity is affirmed by the vision of the outside world. It is also at this crucial moment where the man experiences an intense emotion, waking him from his stupor of resignation and abandonment to the woman.

This turning point serves to illustrate a moment when the status of the other is in question. The reason these characters care about each other is because they both have an unspeakable story. It is only with the mutual understanding that these stories cannot be told, however, that they are able to be told and understood in the proper way. The function each serves is to be someone whom the other can tell what is not tell-able, a function which is devoid of any individual characteristics (it is irrelevant who exactly they are, as long as they also have a tragedy). It is simply the fact that an unspeakable story can exist outside of oneself (in the other person) that makes that person so fascinating and provides the possibility of healing. In this sense, the other person is defined and becomes a symbol mediated by their value to the other.

The reason there is a turning point here is that the role the characters play starts to become more than purely symbolic, although the new role is also related to the past tragedy. As the woman goes back to her hotel, she is deliberating about whether or not to stay with the Japanese man. She speaks into the mirror, and in speaking to the soldier speaks to herself. She tells him that she told her story to a stranger, showing that it was a story that could be told. The fact that she views the Japanese man as a stranger indicates a certain distance between them, which rather than indicating a gulf between them, indicates her realization that he is more than just the symbol of Hiroshima and a stand-in for the German. The anxiety about whether she should stay or not and her conflicting answers (after she says she would not go, she proceeds to leave) show that the question of being with the man is one about her place in the actual world, and not merely about fulfilling a symbolic and personal role (which could be realized with or without the man). Of course, the reason for being with the man is in part because of their shared tragedy, but it is the way in which that sharing allows them to, at least in part, rejoin the world.

In the important last scene, the woman tells the man that he will always be "Hiroshima", and he tells her that she will always be "Nevers'. By giving each other names of the cities associated with their respective tragedies, the characters preserve the real nature of the other's tragedy in its identification with that person. At the same time, the name itself serves merely as a symbol which points to but can never fully indicate the unspeakable referent of the word. The preservation of the symbol in another person, therefore, leaves the actual unbearable trauma behind by permitting it to be forgotten. Earlier, he told her that she will be "the symbol of love without memory" when he forgets her. When she forgets his eyes, his voice, and the rest of him, he will remain only as a song. The catastrophe of forgetting is that there will be nothing to preserve the tragedy, but the resolution here is that the tragedy itself is abstracted into a "song", or a "symbol of love." Hollowed out of specific content, the tragedy can maintain its significance by existing in another person who has experienced a similar tragedy. The very existence of a similar tragedy in the other weakens the unbearable nature of the one each character possesses, and so helps alleviate the anguish of memory.

It is unclear whether this final scene provides a successful resolution of their crisis. In one sense, the recognition that another person shares your tragedy helps reduce the burden of suffering alone. However, the giving of city names at the end indicates their continued existence in a private invented world. Each person is still alone because they view the other not as an equal, but as a symbolic name. Hence, the value that each contains is still only relative to the way in which they help to alleviate suffering. Perhaps the earlier movement away from pure symbolic identity is what allows the new assumption of names; earlier, for example, the woman did not individuate the German soldier from the Japanese architect. By separating the other person out from one's private world, one recognizes their independent status and yet their continued preservation of meaning. By having both of these, the characters achieve a certain resolution in the awareness that their tragedy can live on outside of themselves (in the tragedy of another). This helps to resolve the initial problem because the memory is now preserved, but its existence does not depend solely on the individual who possesses it. This way, the burden of bearing the story is lightened without the fear of betraying it.

Although the film portrays the characters as anonymous and isolated in order to indicate their separation from the world, that isolation simultaneously serves to indicate their universal status. In the imagined world where no one but this man and woman exist, all of humanity would be represented in their story. The black and white film not only precludes the characters from having a set identity, but in so doing abstracts them from particular idiosyncrasies. By automatically creating the illusion of being more dated than it is, the film is pushed away from the viewer. This helps to isolate it and allows it to be viewed apart from historical context or cultural significance. The man, the woman, and the traumas they endured do not need to be localized to any particular place and time, but serve as placeholders for all men, all women, and the perpetual problematic of meaning. The trauma of Hiroshima and of Nevers are indicative of the more general phenomenon of losing innocence and becoming disillusioned, of trying to find order in a world that has proven itself to be chaotic and ungrounded. The problematic which the film acknowledges, however, is that perhaps the only real meaning in this alien world needs to be created by the individual who seeks it.