Children of Hiroshima

Shindo has an eye for the tapestry of small tragedies that make up the whole, but it's Akira Ifukube's haunting and majestic score that ties it together.

You could perhaps call the way it handles the subject matter a tad ham-fisted with characters explaining bluntly how the bomb has affected them, but there's enough sincerity to the whole thing to make up for this with the film being rather moving. A scene where our main character recalls the bombing and we see it playing out was horrifying.

Children of Hiroshima is a fairly straight forward no frills post war drama. The only really theatrical part was at the beginning during a flashback scene of the bomb's devastation which intercut stage theatrics with actual footage. This was made 7 years after the war and it doesn't shy away from the anger, pain and hopelessness that many were feeling. It also shows people coming together and trying to move on and rise above the tragedy.

The subject matter is so weighty that Shindo's naturalistic style almost gets buried, and maybe that's as it should be, but it does make this film a bit harder to appreciate on an artistic level than Shindo's later work. Having praised Shindo's naturalism, though, the moment when he breaks form and reenacts the bombing in an expressionistic style is tremendously powerful.