La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz,
1995) is a black and white crime-drama film which focuses on the social realism
set in the French suburbs which are rural and low class. It follows three young
men, Vinz, Said and Hubert and their struggles with living in France with a
racist and oppressive police force. The themes that are present during the film
are revenge, friendship, poverty, escapism, police brutality, class and
masculinity. La Haine is based on true events of the death of an 18-year-old
black youth who was shot during interrogation by the police in 1992. It was a
low-budget film of €2,590,000 which contains lots of dialogue, few special
effects and unknown actors at that time.
Throughout the film, the
screen changes displaying only the time in a large font, this lets the audience
know that all the events in the film take place in the same day. La Haine shows
approximately 19 consecutive hours in the lives of Vinz, Hubert and Said who
are victims of their own circumstances. Diversity and multiculturalism is a
major theme throughout the film, as the 3 main protagonists all come from
different backgrounds. Vinz is Jewish, Said is Arabic and Hubert is black. This
suggests that they are accepting of each other and they have created a unit
against the police officers who were racist and violent to their friend. La
Haine focuses on real life issues of drugs and violence in Paris. La Haine was
filmed in colour, but in post-production stages was edited to black and white.
This was a stylistic choice, which creates the atmosphere of social and gritty
realism as the audience can focus on the corrupt issues between the working
class in France, so the audience are not focusing on the beautiful setting that
France can portray.
The title sequence of the film
features the song ‘Burnin and Lootin’ by Bob Marley. This creates a clear link
as the title sequence is made up of clips from French riots. Within these they
show a French society protesting in the streets against the police. The images
are graphic and show people tipping cars, looting stores and burning fires.
This leads straight into a news report of riots that have happened; the news
anchor explains that the riots started after a police officer had beaten up a
youth he was questioning, Abdel Ichaha, who is now in critical condition in
hospital.
The film starts at 10:38am, as
a young boy, Said, defaces a police officers van by writing ‘Baise la police’
(screw the police). The audience learns that Said is a delinquent. He stands in
the street calling up to his friend, Vinz, and agitates the neighbours around
him. Said goes into Vinz’s room to wake him up, using violent threats to him
and his family, he then proceeds to ask ‘Where’s the dope?’. Said and Vinz head
to the gym, to find that in the riots it has been trashed, this is where the
audience meet the third character, Hubert.
Vinz describes the riots as
‘War against the pigs’ which tells the audience that he has no respect for
authority and tells Hubert how in the riots they’ve told him he can go to
prison or do community service. Vinz doesn’t seem to be bothered about the thought
of doing time in prison, as he says most of his friends have anyway. The three
boys meet another gang of lads, who tell them ‘A pig lost his gun last night’
and they were trying to work out what gun it was. The boys who are together on
the rooftop are represented as lower class delinquents, as when one of the
young boys sees the Mayor approaching, they proceed to throw stones at him and
shout ‘Hey, screw your mother, you son of a bitch’. This further supports the
point that none of the boys have any respect for authority as they then
continue to argue with the police when they are told that they can’t be on the
roof of the building. The clothing the boys wear suggests they are from a low
class and rural area, as they are stereotypical clothes that might be worn by
black youths.
Then at 12:43pm, the boys are
approached by a reporter who asked them if they took part in the riots. They
begin to harass her by saying ‘Do we look like thugs? Get out of the car’ and
threw a stone at her car whilst arguing with her to stop filming them. Said and
Vinz refer to the reporter as a ‘bastard’ and ‘tart’ which could suggest that
they have no respect for women. This is a key scene as the news crew are
‘looking down’ on the boys. Vinz describes their behaviour as treating them
like they belonged in a zoo, which supports the theme of racism and social
exclusion.
A tracking shot of the camera
leads the audience down a dark corridor, which shows Vinz pulling out a gun to
‘shoot’. This creates a clear link as this is the police officers gun that was
lost in the riots, and the shallow focus creates a suspenseful effect as the
audience now know that Vinz and the boys are planning revenge. Vinz wants to be
powerful and has a newfound means to gain the respect he deserves, by making a
vow to kill a police officer.
In the scene where Vinz,
Hubert and Said attempt to gain entry to the middle-class block of flats where
they hope to meet Asterix, Vinz is given the task to try and go inside because
he is white. This shows how in France, the protagonists are very aware of who
may be looking at their ethnicity and social standing. Vinz aggression
escalates rapidly when they cannot find Asterix, and the audience see this from
a POV shot. This suggests that the audience are the middle-class society,
looking down on Vinz as he is working-class. The audience learn that Asterix’s
apartment is big and wealthy, with a long banquet table and a cabinet filled
with ornaments. This creates a contrast to the apartments the audience saw on
the estate at the beginning of the film, which were the boy’s homes. Asterix
shows his power and dominance in this scene as he screws over Vinz with the gun
he found. Asterix pretends to act as if he is about to shoot himself with the
loaded gun, to which Vinz panics and reacts negatively. As a result, Asterix
and Vinz have an argument which then unfolds that the gun was never loaded and
emphasises the fact that Vinz is inexperienced in what he is trying to do; this
could be foreshadowing to the end of the film when Vinz had the chance to
murder a skinhead but chooses to let him go, and then gets himself killed.
