They prowl around their scenes like an animal on the hunt, cajoling their characters into action by pushing in fast, rapidly removing the space between viewer and subject, leaving them nowhere else to go. Kassovitz and director of photography Pierre Aïm borrow Ernest Dickerson's energetic use of all four corners of the image frame. Movement is important in these movies: the characters keep moving, and so does the camera. Both trade elements of realism for abstraction in order to make their point, and both use an electrified visual style to give their parables life. Both Do the Right Thing and La haine exist in a rarefied space, where there is seemingly no before or after, only now. Lee's film is the story of a day in the life of a New York neighborhood in the 24 hours leading up to a riot, not the period after.
Yet, it's not Scorsese that Kassovitz's incendiary masterpiece most resembles, it's Spike Lee's 1989 picture Do the Right Thing.
#La haine meaning driver#
Only now instead of worshiping Humphrey Bogart, our anti-hero looks up to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and even practices De Niro's infamous "You talkin' to me" speech in the mirror. Like Jean-Paul Belmondo before him, this French gangster imagines himself as a rebel straight off the silver screen. Fittingly, Vinz spends the same time they are in jail watching a violent movie. Not that a more harsh reality isn't always waiting for them Hubert and Saïd also get a taste of actual police brutality. Political indignation turns to "ghetto malaise," as the gallery owner phrases it. Killing time, they terrorize an art gallery, try to steal a car, and get in a brawl with some racist skinheads. There, they become stranded for a night after Saïd's connection doesn't pay out. As the boxer who has decided he doesn't want to fight anymore, he can see the wisdom in its punchline: it's not about how you fall, it's about how well you land.įor an electrified 97 minutes, La haine follows these boys through their neighborhood, where they talk to their cohorts and tussle with local law enforcement, and then on a train to Paris. The only one that pays off is the one that opens the movie, the story of a falling man trying to maintain his optimism as he plummets to Earth. Expressed via jokes and anecdotes, most of the moral conundrums heard throughout La haine seemingly have no greater meaning. In fact, Kassovitz makes a running gag out of the confused philosophy that runs through modern culture. Vinz doesn't have any clear conception of a greater ideology. If Abdel, the boy in the coma, dies, Vinz will use the gun to kill a "pig," taking one of their ranks as retribution for the life they took. In a plot wrinkle right out of Kurosawa's Stray Dog, one of the riot cops lost his revolver in the melee, and Vinz is the one who found it. Saïd wants to collect some money owed him, Hubert wants a way out of the wasteland, and Vinz wants to gain a reputation for himself. Culturally, they look outside France to America, and adopt the music and fashion of the hip-hop scene as expressions of their anger and frustration.Īll three boys have something they want out of their day. They are faced with institutionalized racism, leaving them with limited options and limited means. The motormouthed schemer Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), the pensive boxer Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and the would-be gangsta Vinz (Vincent Cassel) are Arab, black, and Jewish, respectively. For the movie, he decided to turn his camera on a trio of friends who each represent a significant portion of those marginalized in France's projects (known as banlieue). La Haine ( Hate) was written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz in response to an incident similar to the one he centers his film around-a personal tragedy in which a friend of his died in police custody.
The cops are bruised and itching for payback, shop owners and others who had property damaged in the conflagration wonder what it was all for, and the rioters wait to hear if the victim will pull through in case they have to rise up again. The fires have mostly gone out, but tensions are still high.
The 1995 French film La haine chronicles 24 hours in the life of a French ghetto the day after a good portion of its population rioted and looted in protest of police brutality against an Arab youth.
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