The TV Zone

Much, much, much has been written and filmed about Hiroshima and Nagasaki though it's tough to think of any of this as comprehensive or - for that matter - as grueling as "White Light/Black Rain." This is as fine a documentary on one specific aspect of the bombings - the survivors - as one could conceivably imagine, until you are told that there are 200,000 still alive today. Fourteen survivors are profiled here, which means "WL/BR" is only scratching the surface. What's best about "White Light/Black Rain" is that it's not an exercise in political finger wagging. That would have led filmmaker Steven Okazaki down a different trail than the one he intended to explore - what actually happened on those two days 62 years ago, and what has happened since. The narratives are clean and direct, and notable for almost an entire absence of emotion or even anguish. This is who we are, and who we were. This is what we saw. "I've come to realize the only reason I'm alive is to tell people what happened," said one woman who was the only student in a school with 620 pupils to survive. And another: "I realized there are two kinds of courage: The courage to die and the courage to live. Me, I chose the courage to live...I still want to live." "White Light" is filled with details so horrific that one struggles with how best to render them in simple prose: The particularly cruel disposition of the bomb, for example, to suck eyeballs out of skulls, or to liquefy human skin. Okazaki's intent is not to horrify but to remind, and you suspect that even he knows that his battle is a losing one. The hibakusha - those who survived the bomb - were discriminated against and still are (they were initially called the "pika dons," or "untouchables”). They are grim and aged reminders of one of the most horrific moments in human history, yet when young kids at a mall in Hiroshima are asked what happened on August 6, 1945, they affect blank stares before finally blurting out, “I don't know... “
Must watch or must avoid: "White Light/Black Rain" is a fascinating and often engrossing film but it is also filled with graphic images and one wonders why on earth HBO would schedule this at 7:30. It's a hard way to spend a night, which is the whole idea, I suppose.

Oscar-winner Steven Okazaki