I find this movie interesting, there are many parts that seem strange, but makes sense after a little analysis. For instance, the movie opens with the two lovers in an embrace, covered in ash. That is the establishing theme for the movie, that them loving each other has a context to it. Whatever good comes of their affair, it is within the greater tragedy of the rest tragedy and destruction. Like this line where Lui, the man, solemnly says "Here in Hiroshima we don't make fun of films about peace."
Something to note is the perspective in the movie. In the beginning Elle is talking about all of the horrors that she's seen since she's been there. She says she saw hospitals after the nuclear bomb treating the sick and injured, the streets covered in soot and ash, the museum, which is a testament to the destruction the bomb caused, and the people living and dealing with it all. But all through this Lui is contradicting her, saying "no, you don't see" after everything she says. This is because she never saw Hiroshima before the bomb, during the bomb, or immediately after. She sees the relics of the bomb, the ghost of it, in a way. The hospital she saw was clean and white, treating women in rich clothes with bits of decoration around her bed. She didn't see the emergency houses, the rooms filled with the burned, the dead, and the dying. She is a visitor, a foreigner, a gaijin, a westerner who is, in some small part, responsible for the tragedy. She is there to shoot a movie, and when the movie is done she will leave. Lui, on the other hand, has a home to rebuild, a faith to restore, and an identity to recover in the wake of the bomb. She doesn't see the bombing of Hiroshima, she only sees the beginning of its reconstruction.
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