URBAN STORIES  

 

   

PARIS (FRANCE) La  Haine  (1995)  Mathieu  Kassovitz  

Review

It's been labelled French cinema's answer to Boyz N The Hood, but La Haine (Hate) has a flavour all of its own. Writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz butts European urbanity up against American street style as kids clash with cops in suburban Paris. The result is an explosion of scathing social commentary and dynamic storytelling. Delving into the generational, racial, and class divides of his native France, Kassovitz offers a fearless - if unreservedly pessimistic - attack on the frontlines of power.

During a riot in the outskirts of Paris, police beat an Arab teenager (Abdel Ahmed Ghili) into a coma, fuelling a fire of hatred inside Vinz (Vincent Cassel) - a Jew who swears to "whack" a cop if the boy dies. It's left to Vinz's cohorts, the jocular Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) - also Arab - and subdued African boxer Hubert (Hubert Koundé) to talk him out of his bloody plan as they embark on a loafing odyssey from the immigrant neighbourhoods to the big city. Still, the time bomb keeps ticking.

"A FATALISTIC ACCOUNT OF SOCIETY'S DECLINE"

Counting down 24 hours, Kassovitz never gives the illusion of a happy ending. This is a fatalistic account of society's decline and it's plainly one-sided - the only cop who shows sympathy for the "troubled youth" is ineffective among an army of bigots and bullies. Evidently Kassovitz sees things in black and white, which might explain his choice of a striking monochrome print.

But it's the conviction and bold invention with which Kassovitz tells the tale that makes it utterly compelling. Despite a meditative pace, there are shades of Scorsese in his kinetic camera moves, and in a scene lifted straight from Taxi Driver where Vinz poses in the mirror with a gun, snarling, "You talkin' to me?"

Playing Vinz, Cassel radiates with a blistering intensity throughout, while Koundé offsets him with a cool self-assurance. Taghmaoui also turns in an outstanding performance, offering comic relief to balance the otherwise unbearable tension. Superbly acted and brilliantly executed, La Haine will tear through you like a bullet.

Reviewed by Stella Papamichael

First impressions of the Film and its characters

Make notes on the following: did you like it and why, did you hate it – why?      

   

Who are these characters and what did you think of them?  

     

 

     

 

Name:

Characteristics:

Power positioning:

Resolution:

Name:

Characteristics:

Power positioning:

Resolution:

Name:

Characteristics:

Power positioning:

Resolution:

19 MediaMagazine | February 2011 | english and media centre

MM

GhettoCulture

World Cinema can seem daunting to AS Film students. Subtitles, black and white cinematography and a lack of Hollywood stars are all challenges for the uninitiated. But if you have a taste for genre movies, gangsters, guns, violence and drugs, look no further! Pete Turner compares the representations of ghetto culture in foreign language classics City of God and La Haine.

MM

english and media centre | February 2011 | MediaMagazine 19

a young Zairian, Makome M’Bowole [who] was shot in 1993. He was killed at point blank range while in police custody and handcuffed to a radiator.

Elstob, 1997Made for approximately $3 million by first-

time film-maker Kassovitz, La Haine won many awards (including Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival); so devastating was its reception that:

the Prime Minister, Alain Juppe, responded by commissioning a special screening of the film for the cabinet, which ministers were required to attend

Johnston, 1995The narrative, cinematography and use of

music are all clearly influenced by American independent films such as Boyz N The Hood and film-makers such as Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee.

RepresentationsYoung men from ethnic minorities are the

main social group represented in both films. Each film has a young black male protagonist: Rocket in City of God and Hubert in La Haine. The American ‘hood’ film sub-genre often has a character that is trying to reject a life of crime and escape the trappings of the ‘hood’ in which he lives (see also Boyz N The Hood and Menace II Society). Rocket and Hubert both conform to this archetype, and reject crime as a way of life. Rocket flirts with crime but cannot go through with muggings and hold-ups due to his compassionate nature. He tries working at a supermarket but is fired for his connections to the favela. By the end of the film he has become a successful photographer because of his access to the gangs and knowledge of the favela. Similarly, Hubert rejects the rioting of the other youths on his estate. He runs a gym that he worked hard to

ContextsThe narrative of City of God (2002) spans three

decades from the Sixties to the late Eighties. It is the story of a favela (slum/shanty town) and its inhabitants through these turbulent times. Brazil has ‘nearly unrivalled economic inequality’ (Gilligan, 2006) and an estimated 6.5 million inhabitants live in favelas. These people live in extreme poverty and are surrounded by gang violence and the drug trade. The selling and use of cocaine increased through these decades and is depicted in the film.

City of God was ‘financed by TV Globo, Brazil’s biggest TV channel, and o2 Films, Brazil’s biggest commercials company’ (Muir, 2008) and directed by two white middle-class film-makers, Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. It was made on a modest budget of $3,300,000 and grossed over $24 million worldwide suggesting that this was a film that was made for, and appealed to, a mass audience, not just the people of Brazil. The funding by Brazilian corporations of more and more films (and TV shows) about the favelas (e.g. Lower City, Bus 174, Elite Squad, City of Men etc.) has raised debates about the elite’s exploitation of the poor by pandering to middle-class desires for ‘typical’ representations of young black males in gangs, shooting guns and taking drugs.

On the other hand, La Haine (1995) is set in the 1990s and the protagonists live in ‘les banlieues’ (housing estates) on the outskirts of Paris. It also deals with police brutality, racism and civil unrest. It opens with immediate context: real footage of the riots that regularly took place between youths and police between 1986 and 1996 (and were continuing during filming). The director, Mathieu Kassovitz, has often stated that he was inspired to write the film when he heard the story of:

MM

20 MediaMagazine | February 2011 | english and media centre

21 MediaMagazine | February 2011 | english and media centre

MM

Diversity and IdentityCity of God’s focus is mainly on black youths.

The favelas were initially created to house freed slaves, and therefore black people are massively over-represented in this setting. On the other hand, La Haine emphasises racial hybridity with the three protagonists being of Arab, Jewish and African descent. The characters all refer to each other with racial banter; in La Haine the three friends refer to each other’s ethnicities continually. It is argued that people from ethnic minorities often do this to celebrate their difference from the rest of society and also to give them a sense of belonging within their own sub-culture.

A defining characteristic of these ghetto cultures is their antagonism towards the police. The representation of the police in both films is almost entirely negative. In City of God the police are corrupt; they:

stand by and watch the slaughter, only intervening to collect their pay-offs

http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/city-of-god

They sell guns to gangsters, shoot suspects on sight (including an innocent youth on his way to school), steal money and drugs from dealers and are never seen helping anyone. In La Haine, police brutality is witnessed when two of the protagonists are taken into police custody and tortured. One youth is also hospitalised due to

get a grant for, and promotes boxing as a sport for young people to get involved in. The audience first meets him in the ruined gym after the rioters have trashed and burnt it in the previous night’s riots. The film ends with Hubert sucked in to potentially committing the murder of a police officer (or being murdered himself ) as retaliation for the shooting of his friend. Characters who try to escape the ghetto life are often stopped from doing so by circumstances out of their control – or even by death (see also Bullet Boy and Benny in City of God).

These representations of young black males are life-affirming and positive. However, other characters confirm the more negative stereotypes of youths from ethnic minorities. For example, Lil Ze in City of God and Hubert in La Haine are both drug dealers. Lil Ze is a typical crime film villain; the audience watches his rise to the top, followed by his subsequent decline and death. He is violent and psychotic, with no remorse for his actions or sympathy for his victims. He is a cocaine dealer, rapist and gang leader; out of control, hungry for power and desperate to control the favela. On the other hand, Hubert’s drug dealing is only glimpsed in one scene; elsewhere, we see him giving money to his mother for food, and to pay for his sister’s books. He deals hash to help his family; and the film-makers do not judge him for this. The scene in which he makes a transaction is done very matter-of-factly and the audience does not even hear the conversation between Hubert and his customer because the audio highlights the conversation of Hubert’s friends, who are standing in the background of the shot. Dealing is seen as just a typical fact of life rather than dangerous or immoral.

MM

english and media centre | February 2011 | MediaMagazine 21

roles, drug dealing and violence. Their settings may range from Europe to South America, but the social conditions faced by young people from ethnic minorities in these ghetto cultures seem worryingly constant. Power is abused, people in poverty are angry, and conflict ensues. The films bring harsh social realities to the screen in (broadly) educational and visually exciting ways with interesting characters, thrilling narratives and differing styles all packing a punch for Film Studies students… even those who hate subtitles!

Pete Turner teaches Film and Media at Bracknell and

Wokingham College and is undertaking a PhD in Film

Studies at Oxford Brookes University.

BibliographyMuir, S. (2008): Studying City of GodStafford, R. (2000): York Film Notes ‘La Haine’ Kevin Elstob: Review of La Haine in Film

Quarterly Vol. 51, No. 2 (Winter, 1997-98)Gilligan, M. (2006): http://www.metamute.org/

en/Slumsploitation-Favela-on-Film-and-TVJohnston, S. (1995): http://www.independent.

co.uk/arts-entertainment/why-the-prime-minister-had-to-see-la-haine-1578297.html

http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/city-of-god

StylesCity of God and La Haine have very different

visual styles. Both use the mise-en-scène of real locations to add to the realism of the films. However, La Haine uses black and white cinematography to enhance this realism by linking it with the real footage from news reports shown in the opening credits. City of God begins with bright colour (to represent the Sixties and Seventies) but as the narrative progresses, the colours become duller as the concrete trappings of urban development take over. Handheld camera is used throughout City of God enhancing the documentary feel, whereas La Haine features more steadicam movement with long flowing shots following characters through their environment.

The editing also adds to the restlessness of the camera in City of God, with lots of quick cutting and speeding up of footage. La Haine, on the other hand, favours shots with a longer duration and the editing is less choppy than in City of God. This emphasises the idea that life is fast in the favelas, whereas life is boring in les banlieues. However tension is created by using a number of ‘explosive’ cuts at the beginning of La Haine. The image cuts, for example, on Vinz pretending to shoot a gun at his mirror image and hitting a boxing bag. The sound of a gunshot is used on each of these cuts.

Music is also incredibly important in both films; the samba beat, funk and soul in City of God and hip hop in La Haine. Both examples use music to give a strong sense of time and place, and help create a sense of identity for the characters.

The two films contain many similarities; the iconography of the crime film, the mise-en-scène of poverty, characters from ethnic minorities living in poor and dangerous conditions. They both feature antagonism towards the police, a lack of women in major

his treatment by the police; and this propels the narrative, with one of the protagonists, Vinz, declaring that he will kill a police officer with a gun he has found if the youth in hospital dies.

The use of guns in the films is also interesting to compare. In City of God, guns are everywhere; gang members and even small children carry firearms, ranging from pistols to Kalashnikovs, bought from corrupt police. In one particularly disturbing scene, children are cornered and shot; gangs and the police face-off and have shoot-outs in the streets. On the other hand, in La Haine there are only four guns in the whole film. One character has found a pistol lost by a police officer in the riots, and the hesitation over using this gun leads to the devastating climax. Life is not as cheap on these European streets as it is in the Brazilian favelas.

Women are under-represented in both these films, and often portrayed in a negative light. They are both very masculine stories with little time for female characters. La Haine, for example, has been accused of:

ignoring women and for importing the violence and nihilism of American gang movies

Stafford, 2000Women are the subjects of derision in the

film; the characters tease each other using ‘your mother…’ and ‘your sister…’ jokes. In City of God, however, women are a civilising influence, with two male characters expressing a desire to settle down and quit crime when in a relationship. It is argued that the male characters in these films are often emasculated and that this is the reason for their behaviour and attitude to women. They lack jobs, education or any reason to feel pride, so they resort to carrying guns and insulting women to make themselves feel like men.

MM

22 MediaMagazine | February 2011 | english and media centreImages credit Image.net

Social Historical and Political

Below is a list of contextual factors, try to comment on their relevance to the film and how you read it. Social, historical and political Contexts The projects or, les banlieues:

• Les banlieues are satellite ‘new towns’ (for which read housing estates for the poor) up to twenty miles out of Paris that almost seem designed to keep the poor out of the middle-class centre of the city

• The ‘new town’ in which La Haine was filmed had at the time an official

population of 10,000 made up of sixty different nationalities or ethnicities

• These are stereotyped in the media as places of urban deprivation crime and drug use.

The French Empire and Imperialism...

• France was a major colonial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with colonies in Africa, the Carribean and Sout-East Asia.

• The struggle for independence was particularly bitter in some countries such

as Algeria (which gained independence in 1962) and Vietnam (where the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954).

• Some colonies, like Martinique, remain and are able to send representatives

to the French Assembley. Other former colonies, like Senegal, remain closely linked to France and French culture.

• French policy towards non – white ethnic groups has always been on of

‘assimilation’ with people being expected to take on French cultural norms and values. Many Algerians, Moroccans Tunisians, in particular, who went to France to work during the 1960s, have to a greater or lesser extent resisted this policy.

• Maintaining the purity of the French language both at home and abroad was

given a much higher priority than the British gave to upholding the English usage in their colonies

• Verlan, or ‘backslang’, began around Paris in the 1980s, among second

generation ethnic minority young people who saw themselves as positioned between their parents’ culture and French culture.

Racism

• Immigration was limited by the French government during the economic crisis of the early 1970s.

• Fascist far-right groups (as in many other European countries during the

period) have consistently blamed unemployment on immigrants.

• In the 1980s the National Front began to win some local elections and even parliamentary seats, especially in South and Southwest France.

• Those who administered Vichy France during the Second World War

collaborated in sending French Jews to the concentration camps

• Kassovitz’ father (who himself fled Hungary in 1956) was the son of a concentration camp survivor.

The Police and Racism

• There are two main police groups in the film: the neighbourhood plain clothes police and the riot police

• Racism (as in the UK) has been seen to be a particular problem in the police

force.

• There were over 300 deaths in police custody or from police action from 1980 to 1995 when the film was made

         

Make notes of relevance to representations in ‘La Haine’.

Six Important Scenes

Scene description 1: : Stylistic features: Why is it important? Scene description 2: Stylistic features: Why is it important:: Scene description 3: : Stylistic features:

Why is it important:

Six Important Scenes

Scene description 4: Stylistic features: Why is it important? Scene description 5: Stylistic features: Why is it important:: Scene description 6: : Stylistic features:

Why is it important:

Social and Historical Context

Below is an article taken from the Guardian newspaper illustrating that this problem is still relevant ten years on.

Highlight and annotate it showing its relevance to the film

Riots continue in Paris suburbs Staff and agencies

Wednesday November 2, 2005

French police clash with youths as vehicles are torched in riots at Aulnay-sous-Bois, near Paris.

Photograph: Travers/Le Floch/EPA

Violent clashes between police and immigrant groups in the suburbs around Paris have continued for the sixth consecutive night with scores of cars set alight and nearly three dozen people arrested overnight, officials said today.

Police in riot gear fired rubber bullets at advancing gangs of youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois - one of the worst-hit suburbs - where 15 cars were burned. Youths lobbed molotov cocktails at an annex to the town hall and threw stones at the fire station, despite appeals for calm yesterday from the French prime minister, Dominique de Villlepin.

Officials gave an initial count of 69 vehicles destroyed in nine suburbs across the Seine-Saint-Denis region to the north and north-east of Paris. The area, which is home mainly to families of immigrant origin, most from Muslim north Africa, is marked by soaring unemployment and social unrest.

The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, told Europe-1 radio that police detained 34 people overnight. Mr Sarkozy - blamed by many for fanning the violence with uncompromising language and harsh tactics - defended his approach and vowed to restore peace.

The rioting began on Thursday after two teenagers, aged 15 and 17, were fatally electrocuted and a third injured in a power substation. There have been claims, denied by officials, that they where were hiding to escape from police.

Mr Sarkozy caused uproar by calling the rioters "scum" and continued to defend his stance in an interview in today's Le Parisien newspaper in which he said the current policy dealing with poor immigrant communities had failed.

"The reigning order is too often the order of gangs, drugs, traffickers. The neighbourhoods are waiting for firmness but also justice.... and jobs," he told the paper.

An Associated Press news team witnessed confrontations between about 20 police and 40 youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Officials said that "small, very mobile gangs" were harassing police as well as setting fire to rubbish bins and vehicles throughout the region.

Yesterday, Mr de Villepin met the parents of the three teenagers, promising a full investigation of the deaths and insisting on "the need to restore calm", the prime minister's office said.

Despite that, tension continued to mount after young men torched cars, garbage bins and even a primary school the night before. Scores of cars were reported burned on Monday night in Clichy-sous-Bois, and 13 people were detained.

Youths set two rooms of a primary school in Sevran on fire on Monday along with several cars, the mayor, Stephane Gatignon, said in a statement.

Mr Sarkozy's handling of the situation has been criticised within the conservative government. The equal opportunities minister, Azouz Begag, said he "contests this method of becoming submerged by imprecise, warlike semantics".

For three decades, successive governments have injected funds and launched projects but failed to improve the lives of many marginalised communities in suburban areas.

Special report France World news guide France

List how these social issues are represented in ‘La Haine’.

Questions that La Haine Poses/Answers

How do you think that the film attempts an answer to these questions through the narrative?

• Does the government do enough for people in the working class and estate environment?

• What is there for people to do on the estate?

• What are the causes of crime?

• How does society feel about minority groups?

• What is the result of police brutality?

• What impact can political figures have on society?

   

     

     

     

 

Consider how these social issues are represented in ‘La Haine’.

Make comments below:

Reviews of La Haine

Using this review answer the following questions (do this by highlighting and annotating the reviews):

• What were the different scenes identified in the comments? What was it about these scenes that the viewer particularly enjoyed or disliked?

• What did the comments say about the story of the film? Was the subject matter something that the viewer could relate to?

• What was said about the stylistic elements of the film? • Was the director mentioned, and if so, what was said about the directors style

of film making and their other films • Do the viewer comments tell you anything about the target audience for the

film? • What did you find out about the historical context (how the film relates to the

time in Paris when it was shot) of the film?  

Author: Bogey Man from Finland

La Haine aka Hate is a story about three friends living near Paris in France (one Jew, one Arab and one black) who have nothing special in their lives and try to live a day at a time by drinking and having a good time and also working (at least the black character, who owns a boxing hall). Their friend, however, is captured by a police which tortures and maltreats him so badly that he is sent to a hospital in a critical condition. This makes the youth gangs in city including the three protagonists start a war against the police and authorities for the horrible wrongs they and their friend have suffered, and suddenly they notice the whole society is collapsing, and all there is is hate and need to revenge...Violence and mayhem is almost everywhere, including authorities which should do nothing but fight against it.. This film is powerful and grim. Totally unforgettable is the last scene which at my first viewing time blew me away. It comes very suddenly and there are no warnings what will happen at the end of this film. The message is so important and these marks of the "apocalypse" can be found in our everyday life everywhere. The society is falling and it is "spinning" as the voice over says just before the end credits..The film brings into question such horrific facts as racism which should have passed away long times ago, but no. Racism is such a primitive, stupid and despisable cancer among people, that there is no hope of better future if individuals don't understand the real facts of life and right ways to live with each other. Hate feeds hate as the character Hubert says, and that is something that our stupid race has not learned. There is one very powerful scene just before the end scene and it deals with a skinhead and these three characters who could kill him right away and pay something back. It is very challenging scene and even Vinz, the most revenge seeking character, starts to see things different way after that. The whole point of La Haine is violence in all its forms. Why there is violence and why the hell it is used so often everywhere in every form? Don't we ever learn? These kind of films are important and so powerful that unfortunately people who should see them don't want to or they can't because it would be as a mirror for them..

The film is also a comment on power used by police as they are pretty tough and hard in this film. Police think that they can use any methods in order to get some answers, or in order to have some fun..It certainly doesn't judge police as "pigs" or violent sadists in general, but it is a warning example of what must NOT happen anywhere ever, by police or by others. One has to see through the film and to its core in order to understand what it says. Otherwise there is no point in watching these kind of films. La Haine is that kind of a film that it should be seen by police and youths as well, because there are still possibilities to prevent things to go too far in our life and world we live in. The camera techniques used in this film are magnificent. Director/screenwriter Mathieu Kassovitz uses camera so smoothly and passionately and there are many similarities in techniques between this film and his more recent, Assassin(s). I am very happy for this young talent to have won the director's award at Cannes. These kind of talents deserve their prizes because there are so many stupid and worthless films which don't have nothing artistic in them and have nothing to say, and are just mindless and greedy entertainment. The black and white is very great element and the film strikes greatly without colors. The same case is with the Belgian classic Man Bites Dog, by Remy Belvaux, Benoit Poelvoorde and Andre Bonzel. A great masterpiece in French modern cinema and recommended for the fans of intelligent and important cinema so seldom found from big studios or Hollywood (there are exceptions, of course) nowadays. 10/10

 

 

Representation

Consider how American Culture dominates the characters lifestyle

Consider how Other Cultures influence the characters lifestyle.

Consider how French Culture influences the characters lifestyle

Think about the representation of Youth, Gender, Ethnicity and Place

Scene description 1: Situation Stylistic features: Messages/Values: Scene description 2: Situation: Stylistic features: Messages/Values:

Scene description 3: Situation: Stylistic features:

Messages/Values:

Scene description 3: Situation: Stylistic features:

Messages/Values:

The Tension of “La Haine”

Mathieu Kassovitz

There is a formal struggle in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995) between unflinching

realism and filmic self-consciousness. Much has been made of the picture’s sociological

importance but an awareness of its cultural implications should not cloud an appreciation of

its sophisticated construction.

The film presents a day in the life of three youths in an unidentified Parisian slum. It begins

with black-and-white documentary footage of real riots and starts, as a result, with a feel of

historical authenticity. The cinematographic choice to shoot in a similar black-and-white look

seems to bind the film proper to the stock footage with which it opens: on the one hand, the

fiction of La Haine is allowed the authority of history. The story begins the day after a riot in

which a police inspector’s gun has gone missing: on the other hand, then, history fills in

narrative blanks, as the tumult recorded in the stock footage acts as a surrogate for the

fictional riot that we are not allowed to see.

The narrative is full of similar holes, as well as tedious stories, dead-ends and unfunny jokes:

it appears as uneven as life. Take, for example, when, sat killing time in a park, a young boy

tells Vinz (Vincent Cassel) a story about a celebrity who’s been set up for the television show

Candid Camera. The tale crescendos as the celebrity tries “to act cool” but, as he gets more

uneasy, inevitably “starts ranting at [a] guy”. Finally, the story climaxes only in a bathetic

petering out: “They start fighting and the Candid Camera guys have to break it up.” “Then

what?” “That’s all.” “Who was the celebrity?” “Dunno, but he was real famous. I don’t

remember.” Later, Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) ruins a potentially funny joke by over-telling it. He

begins, “Heard the one about the nun?” He recounts how a drunken man, leaving a bar,

comes across a nun in a long black cape. He starts beating her up and, after about five

minutes, finally says “You’re not so tough, Batman!” The comedy is defused when Saïd

exclaims, after a brief pause, “He thought the nun was Batman!” Vinz rounds off the

deadening by saying, “I heard it was a rabbi.”

The film ends with what feels like a true to life stroke, when it is Vinz and not a policeman

that is shot. Throughout the film we are allowed to see Vinz enacting (in his head) the desire

to shoot a “pig”. His fantasy is to avenge the death of his friend Abdel Ichaha who dies at the

hands of police brutality. He shouts at Hubert (Hubert Koundé) that he’s learnt from the

streets: “Turn the other cheek: you’re a dead motherfucker!” When, though, he is handed a

skinhead to kill (one apparently worthy of death, as Hubert antagonises him, screaming,

“There are good cops. But the only good skinhead is a dead skinhead!”), he finds he cannot.

He knows he’s not a gangster. Neither does he die a glamorous death: he is shot only because

a gun goes off by accident. It is a realistically unflattering end to a head that was filled with

fantasies.

But his blood runs on the pavement black not red. While the black-and-white cinematography

may appear to lend a sense of authenticity to the picture, it instead creates a distance between

the film and real-life and places it in the realm of self-conscious cinema. There are references

to colour throughout the picture that jolt the viewer and make her aware of its absence. Vinz,

talking about the riots of the previous night, says, “It was war against the pigs, in living

colour!” If colour is a sign of life, then the decision to shoot La Haine in black-and-white

separates it from reality. In a shop, buying peppers for his grandma, Vinz does not have

enough money for the green ones, only the red, which she hates. As the viewer sees Vinz and

the shopkeeper argue over the peppers, all uniformly grey, she begins to feel that, if

everything were in colour, if there was some hope, everything would be fine. The world of La

Haine becomes painfully black and white; the absence of colour is felt.

There are also references to filmic conventions and tropes that feel specifically placed in the

mouths of the characters to emphasise their roles as created puppets. Saïd asks one man,

“What’s with the hair net? […] You a movie star?” High and stuck in Paris over night, he

claims, “I’ll switch off the Eiffel Tower”, before being told by the rest of the trio, “That only

works in movies.” As Vinz tries to express his anger at the police, he mimics Travis Bickle

(Robert De Niro) from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), turning the originally cool

psychopathy into a grotesquely distorted face:

These references feel metatextual only at the level of the scriptwriter (also Kassovitz): they

serve to remind the viewer that La Haine is a film, not a documentary, and the characters are

not allowed to know. As the trio turn away from the Eiffel Tower and leave frame left, the

shot lingers for a second, empty. Suddenly, the Tower begins to turn off but Vinz, Saïd and

Hubert are not there to see it.

Kassovitz creates a dream-like world in which normal social and physical rules do not apply,

in which the Eiffel Tower will turn off at a command. Hubert’s boxing gym has been trashed

and left in pieces early in the film; there’s even a car that’s been deserted inside. Throughout

the picture, Saïd wonders, “How’d the car get in here? The doorway’s not big enough.” His

questions go unnoticed by the others but they niggle the viewer because they remain

unanswered. How can a car get in through doors that are too small? Vinz’s repeated

references and visions of a cow border on the surreal. As the viewer sees his fantasies enacted

on screen throughout the film, the image of a cow walking down a street lends no certainty to

his claims to truth. The question of the nature of the cow – real animal or phantom – remains

unanswered.

The cinematography also strengthens the dream-like (or nightmarish) aesthetic of the

surreal. When Hubert is first presented to the viewer he is shirtless in his gym, punching a

lone black boxing bag that hangs from the ceiling, surrounded by the debris of the recent

destruction:

The tone of the scene is uncompromisingly dark. The regular thud of his blows ominously

preempts his presence: we hear before we see. The viewer follows the enigmatic sound and,

when she finds Hubert, he is shot in slow motion. Such a presentation lends a rhythmical

quality to his training: the brutality of boxing is moved closer to the elegance of dancing. The

local temporality is uncertain: the viewer is left wondering how long Hubert has been training

and how long he will go on. The viewer is similarly sent following sounds later in the film,

when a DJ plays music at the top floor of a block of flats. The camera starts beside the decks

inside the room but, as the music begins, it slowly floats out the window, hovering far above

the street and extending into the sky. We’re allowed to fly, for a time.

Such transcendence, physically represented in this ethereal flying, is hinted at near the start of

the film. After the documentary footage, the viewer is presented with a shot of the globe. The

enormous circle fills the frame and is accompanied by a voice unattached to a body, uttering

“so far so good. How you fall doesn’t matter: it’s how you land.” A molotov cocktail falls in

slow motion towards the world and fire erupts on impact. It feels like a sort of visual

epigraph, hinting at an allegorical significance: the entire world, ending in flames, is what

opens this picture. The movement from a larger orb to a smaller one, from the globe to Saïd’s

head, like the opening scene of American Beauty (1999), smash cutting from an aerial view

of the town to Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) in bed, invites the viewer to attribute to this

particular narrative a universal significance: it suggests similar stories go on throughout the

world.

But La Haine is inextricably rooted in the unique environment of the banlieues and a reading

of the film as a universal allegory is consistently frustrated (though never totally shut off).

The opening sequence, for example, is tethered to the specific slum of the film: the shot of

the world turns out to be only a frayed poster stuck to a wall. These posters, appearing all

over the city and apparently advertising optimistic outward reaching (they say “the world is

yours”), in fact reinforce the walls that surround the characters. When Saïd spray paints one

of these images, changing the tag line to “the world is ours”, it feels less like an affirmation

of the poster’s sentiment and instead a grim realisation that his world, the banlieue, is

inescapable. The voice that accompanies the image of the globe feels like the omniscient

presence of a narrator. Similarly, though, it is soon tied to the specifics of this story: the

aphoristic anecdote (“How you fall doesn’t matter: it’s how you land”) is put into the mouth

of Hubert, the only character of the trio that openly expresses a desire to escape (“I have to

get out; I have to leave this place ”). His mother knows what these wishes achieve and only

says: “if you see a grocery, buy me a lettuce.”

La Haine breeds tension. There is a struggle between apparent realism and filmic self-

consciousness; the narrative hints at a universal application, while frustrating a reading that

moves away from the specifics of the banlieue and, most sadly, the characters’ pretensions

(Vinz’s murderous fantasies or Hubert’s escape, for example) are stripped away as the picture

progresses. These tensions are unresolved and it is fitting that there is no real sense of

conclusion: as the viewer is only allowed to hear the shot, when Hubert and the policeman

are at gunpoint, she does not know who is killed. She knows though that someone has been

shot and this knowledge not only diminishes the emotional power of Vinz’s death, as one

follows another so quickly, but also invokes a feeling of social stagnation: the narrative does

not conclude because the situation continues (effectively) unchanged. Equally, Hubert’s first

words are echoed at the end: “How you fall doesn’t matter: it’s how you land.” The cyclic

pattern this repetition suggests is paralleled in the microcosm of a single line, again from

Hubert. When arguing with Vinz, he warns him simply that “hate breeds hate.”

Stylistic Features – Micro Elements

Glue your sheets in here

Genre Conventions

Conventions

Consider – Other Urban Stories and make a list of similar conventions.

• • • • • •

Conventions

Consider – How ‘’La Haine’ references other films and why? List below.

• • • • • • • •

Consider – How far ‘La Haine’ differs from other Urban Stories?

La Haine

1. What does ‘La Haine’ say about the power relations within French culture and the community that the characters inhabit?

2. How far is poverty in ‘La Haine’ considered as a social and cultural problem?

3. What do Vinz, Hubert and Said consider to be the central conflict in their lives? How true is their perception?

4. To what extent are conflicts and power struggles resolved in the film? Refer to key sequences in your response.

 

 

 

 

 

5. What are the central themes of the film? Are they universal themes that could have been

addressed by a film made in the UK or the USA?

6. La Haine was shot in Black and White, arguably giving it a ‘documentary’ feel – how does this

add to (or detract from) the content of the film?

7. Would you say that Kassovitz could be called an auteur? Can you see a ‘directorial signature’

through mise en scene and other micro elements?

8. Consider the use of camera movement, editing, lighting and sound. How have these

elements been used and to what extend are you familiar with the way these techniques have been

used?