La Haine

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.

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...

I have seen La Haine a handful of times now and with each viewing it just gets better.

The first thing that stands out about the film is the cinematography. It's rare that a film like this is considered both genuine and a good example of it's art but La Haine is both.

The plotline is compelling and realistic and neatly shows the way that inner city life has gone in the big cities in France as well as proving that despite the romance of Paris, it suffers from the same problems as any other major city.

The characters are above all believable and the cast did a great job. The quality of acting is simply stunning from several actors and it would be a shame if it was simply dismissed as "just another foreign art-house movie" by audiences outside France.

Above all the film whilst showing the influences of American films and society has a very clear sense of it's own identity and at no time does it feel like another US Ghetto film transposed to France. This is a major boon to the film and it stands out of the crowd for this, even though many people will dislike it because of this. It is, however, their loss.

It's hard to recommend this film highly enough, but I should add that more than one viewing is required to get the best from La Haine.

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")

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 bacause 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