What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Inscription:

To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel

Letter:

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0A2

Dear Mr. Harper,

For the first time I’m sending you an original screenplay and with it, naturally, the movie that was made from it. Hiroshima Mon Amour was written by Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), who is often associated with the Nouveau roman literary movement in France, and directed by Alain Resnais (born in 1922), who is often grouped with the French Nouvelle vague film movement. Nouveau roman, Nouvelle vague—that’s the adjective “new” twice. And indeed, Duras and Resnais and their cohorts in the 1950s and 60s were doing something new in their respective attempts to break from the conventions of the past to better address the needs of the present. Despite dating from half a century ago—the movie was released in 1959—the newness of Hiroshima Mon Amour hasn’t worn off.

You’ll see that right away. The movie seems to have all the traits of a staid classic. It’s shot in black-and-white, the style of the clothes worn by the characters would now be called vintage, the cars seen in the movie are now antiques, and so on. But right away the movie subverts expectations. The subject matter, for example. So many movies nowadays merely entertain, that is, amuse without challenging, titillating spectators but not actually upsetting them. Nothing like that with Hiroshima Mon Amour. The very title makes that clear. Hiroshima will always be best known for one thing: for having been the unhappy and devastated target of the world’s first atomic bomb. That title starter is followed by Mon Amour. My love? The-horrible-death-of-70,000-men-women-and-children-instantly-and-then-at-least-another-100,000-as-a-consequence-of-radiation-sickness My Love? Be forewarned: this is not a movie that goes particularly well with popcorn.

The mode of narration is another challenge. Despite the lack of any special effects, the movie is hardly an example of cinematic realism. Outwardly, it’s about a French actress shooting a movie on peace in Hiroshima who meets a Japanese architect with whom she has a brief love affair. But that’s like saying that Death in Venice is about an old fag who goes to Venice and dies. The trappings of plot in Hiroshima—as in Death in Venice—are secondary. What really determines the shape of the movie are the forces of pain, longing, memory and time. Duras’ screenplay and Resnais’ film are like opera: they’re all about emotion. The story is therefore minimal, the characters are known only as He and She, the sequence of events is unpredictable. Hiroshima is a reactive movie, in the same sense that emotions are reactive. And so it has the features of strong emotion: it is wilful, stubborn, awkward, strangely attractive. Next to it, the usual fluff we get in cinemas today, so formulaic and clichéd, comes off as reactionary.

Hiroshima Mon Amour is sober and radical. It’s a beautiful, intelligent and moving experience. I hope you rise to its challenge.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

encl: one paperback and one DVD, both inscribed

P.S. And still another reply. Though this one doesn’t mention the book it is meant to acknowledge. If I go by the date, May 22nd, it must be a thank you for my gift of The Gift, by Lewis Hyde [See Reply section of Book Number 55]. I get the sense that L.A. Lavell, another of your executive correspondence officers, didn’t spend much time on the book. Will you ever write to me?