Black Rain

When the bomb falls on Hiroshima, Yasuko is on a boat outside the city. The black rain that comes down falls on her. Five years later she is living at her uncle's house and they are trying to marry her off, but every prospect from the city asks where she was that day and withdraws. The film is not interested in the explosion. It is interested in the years afterward: the bomb appears only in flashback, and the real subject is the marking of survivors and living in wait for an illness. As people in the village die one by one, nobody names it. The form is black and white and patient: an image approaching the texture of period newsreel, long everyday scenes and calm editing. Even the blast sequences avoid display. Shōhei Imamura directed, from Masuji Ibuse's 1965 novel. The film won the Grand Prix de la Commission Supérieure Technique at Cannes in 1989 and took major prizes at the Japan Academy Awards. Yoshiko Tanaka plays Yasuko and Kazuo Kitamura the uncle. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese cinema and accounts of post-war trauma. Who it is not for: anyone expecting direct historical narration. The film moves almost without event and accumulates its pain slowly, inside everyday detail.