O Ódio

Reminiscent of Costas-Gavras' film Z with its rapid-fire dialogue and staccato rhythms, La Haine (Hate) directed by 28 year-old Mathieu Kassovitz, is a passionate look at racial tensions at a Paris housing project. Although drug dealing, urban decay, and police brutality have been shown in films before, rarely have they had the sense of vitality and urgency shown in La Haine.

Three friends from different ethnic backgrounds live in the Bluebell housing projects on the outskirts of Paris. This is not the Paris of travel brochures or films like Amelie, but a desolate urban landscape, harsh and grim with housing projects that look as if they could be in any big city in the world. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), is a working class Jew; Hubert (Hubert Kounde), the most intelligent and self-reflective of the three, is an African boxer; and Said (Said Taghmaoui), an Arab from North Africa is younger but just as embittered.

The film depicts their rage against the police whom they see as oppressors. Marginalized economically and politically, without jobs, parents who care, or hope for the future, the streets are their home and they are open targets for police who are shown as brutal and racist. In one startling scene, a veteran cop taunts and physically abuses Said and Hubert while training a rookie cop. The rookie can only look on and shake his head in disbelief.

Shot in black and white, La Haine shows a single day in the lives of the three friends. Following a major riot in which a local teenager, Abdel, is critically wounded by the police, Vinz, the most volatile of the group, vows that if Abdel dies he will kill a cop to get even. Hubert wants to restrain him, and Said doesn't seem to care either way, as long as he can get his money from a drug dealer named Snoopy. When Vinz finds a Smith & Wesson 44 lost by the police during the riots, the spiral of violence escalates and builds toward a memorable conclusion.

La Haine does not offer any solutions to social problems but clearly shows the anger and frustration of people who feel trapped by their circumstances. In its depiction of a society in free-fall, it also has immediacy. Three weeks after the film was released, riots broke out in the Brixton section of London, following the death of a young black man in police custody. Though it is a wake-up call for action on society's growing gap between rich and poor, La Haine makes a powerful statement that violence does not solve anything and that hate begets hate. Someone should pass the word to a few of the world leaders.

"La Haine", probably one of the most momentous French movies of the nineties caused a stir when it opened in 1995 so much so that it became a big social phenomenon. It heralded a genre: the "film De Banlieue" whose backdrop is high-risk French suburbs and in its wake, other movies emerged like "Bye-Bye" (1995) or "ma 6-T Va Crack-Er" (1997). "La Haine" remains Mathieu Kassovitz's best moment. Afterwards, he didn't cease to disappoint me. "Assassin(s)" (1997) left me uncomfortable and queasy and "les Rivières Pourpres" (2000) was an absolute turkey. I haven't seen "Gothika" (2003) but he shot it with the Hollywood presence on his back and I fear the worst.

To better be immersed in his plan, Kassovitz shot his film in one of these high-risk French suburbs (I can't remember its name but you can check it in the "filming locations" rubric when you arrive on the page of the film on this site). This gives his movie an ultra-realist sensation which rings true. In the space of a day, his camera follows a threesome of ruffians. There's Vinz (Vincent Cassel) who acts the tough guy. He is proud of having stolen the gun of a cop and hopes to make good use of it. When he is asked to make an effort of reflection, he loses his temper. Hubert (Hubert Koundé) a pacifist who craves to get out of this daily hell but where to go? He also knows that hate breeds hate. It's both the catalyst of the riots and adds fuel to the fire in the incessant conflicts. And also Saïd (Saïd Thagmaouï), a brazen teenager. The three of them wander in their neighborhood and in Paris between visiting of friends, relationships with the riffraff, the police, arguments, reconciliations and foolish things. An ordinary day during which the trio appears as prisoners of their suburbs and have a life with no horizon. A day which will lead to the inevitable, marked out by the time which often appears on a black screen.

Kassovitz did his best to create a stylish film and it paid off well. It was a good idea to have shot his film in a black and white cinematography because it bestows it with a very gritty aura; sometimes there's a documentary whiff which pervades the film. His camera work which commands admiration makes juxtapose travelings, static shots and circular movements according to the vibe a sequence could convey. It also helps to enhance the scenery which is perhaps the fourth main actor of the film after the trio. Overrall, his film is a hard-hitting assessment of a faltering universe (the high-risk suburbs) in which latent tensions and hate reign and it can awake at any time in violence. This hate in question which the inhabitants of these suburbs feel towards the cops is also smoldered in the cops and I wonder if Kassovitz indicts their sometimes intolerable demeanor, especially when some ruffians are kept in police custody. In the beginning of the film, the audience learns that a suspect, Abdel is in a coma at hospital because he was badly injured by the cops during questioning. When they learned this, the toughest guys of these suburbs sparked off a riot. In a way, the attitude of the police helps to fuel the hate and to separate farther the gap and the incomprehension between the inhabitants of these suburbs and the police. That said, Kassovitz doesn't generalize. Not all the cops are monstrous. Check the two sequences when in the first one, a policeman tries to make the riffraff understand in a sensible manner that they can't stay on the roof of a building and the second sequence when Vinz, Hubert and Saïd are in Paris and they ask their way to a policeman who guides them in a polite way.

The actors were discerningly chosen and perfectly directed. It seems that Kassovitz fostered improvisation. It was the right method to confer his film with an authentic feeling. They deliver dialogs full of slang, coarse lines and sometimes they're inaudible so you'll have to be very attentive to catch what they say. However, this drawback isn't really irritating and was surely wanted by the director to reinforce the unique spontaneity of the film. With his build and his face of ruffian, Vincent Cassel was ideally cast as the stubborn Vinz while his two main partners are amazingly true to life. And there are some famous French actors who have cameos and who weren't afraid of having demeaning parts like Vincent Lindon, a drunkard or Zinedine Soualem, a sadistic cop.

Kassovitz remains as objective as possible and doesn't offer solutions to solve these problems. More than ten years after it reached the streets, his films is still a topical one and the riots and violent incidents which broke out in high-risk suburbs in many French cities the last fall alas show that these tensions aren't alas ready to subside.

This is a film that aims to present the yearnings of the poor and brown/black in the simplest and truest form possible. Everything for Vinz is black and white, while Hubert's world is shaded in grays. Saïd is just doing his best to keep up. Through the three main characters, our own thoughts on the state of society (police brutality, poverty, etc) are revealed. That's the beauty of the film. It asks you the questions instead of serving you the answers in a way that's not preachy but encouraging. And that ending...

When the youth Abdel goes to the hospital in coma due to a battering he receives at the police station, there are riots in the outskirts of Paris and one policeman loses his revolver. On the next morning, the Arab Said (Saïd Taghmaoui) summons his Jewish friend Vinz (Vincent Cassel) and they meet the black boxer Hubert (Hubert Koundé) in the slum where they live. Soon Vinz shows the missing gun that he found in the night before and he tells that if Abdel dies, he will revenge his friend killing a police officer. The trio of troublemaker and pothead friends head to the downtown of Paris where they spend the day asking for trouble. On the end of the long night, tragedy happens.

The awarded "La Haine" is an impressive French movie that follows along 24 hours, the lives of three idle friends from a poor suburb of Paris that belong to a lost generation. I saw this movie in the 90's and today I have decided to see it again to compare the situations shown in the movie with what is recently happening in Brazil with several riots and it is amazing the similarities: lost youths with neither instruction nor job; unprepared and brutal police force; low quality of life in the slums or ghettos in the outskirts of the big cities (in Brazil, there are several slums also in the noble areas). The only difference is basically that France belongs to the First World and Brazil to the Third World; the rest is identical. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Ódio" ("The Hate")

'Mean Streets' in french - and so much more. While there are so many references to Scorsese that you could almost call it an homage, this French milestone deals with the disillusioned youth who live in the outskirts of Paris in such an elegant - and honest - way, that I would go so far as to call it the most relevant French film of the last 20 years. But it's also a cinematic masterpiece and great, often hilarious entertainment. Everything fits: the musical choices, the outstanding performances by the 3 main characters, the beautiful cinematography and flawless direction. And, perhaps most of all, THE perfect script.

As much a realistic portrayal of a torn society as it is an artistic achievement, 'La Haine' is essential viewing.

My vote: 10 out of 10

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