La Haine: The cinematic time-bomb

Entry Number: 4

Film: La Haine

Year Of Release: 1995

Director: Mathieu Kassovitz

Rating: ?

*Warning: Major spoilers*

If you haven't, go watch this movie first, and then come back to this review.

La Haine was a hit when it was released in 1995. It was a commercial success, received a standing ovation at Cannes, and most notably, director Mathieu Kassovitz won a well-deserved Cannes for directing. I remember reading my favorite critic Roger Ebert's review of this movie, and he liked it, but was a bit confused by the filmmaking. And the thing about the filmmaking is that is seems like a classic example of style over substance, but for me it is anything but style over substance. The title translates to "Hate", and the angry and in your face filmmaking brings us into the film's world, which is full of hate and anger. It's not style over substance, it's style as substance.

La Haine was not completely without controversy when it was released though. The portrayal of the police was divisive. Some meant the film tried to show every single police officer as a bad person. But in my eyes, the three main characters and the police are just as bad. They are all a piece in the puzzle, with the puzzle being why the society the characters live in is so bad.

La Haine follows three men: A Jew, an Arab, and an Afro-French. They all belong to races that are constantly suppressed by the police. The day after a protest that resulted in police violence, they walk the streets of France. Nothing of significance really happens, but you know that our three characters are bombs, and at one point, they will explode.

All three characters are filled with complex writing. Saïd, the Arab, is angry, but manages to keep it within himself most of the time. In the end, it seems that this is what makes him the only one to survive. Hubert, the Afro-French, seems to be the smart and wise one, keeping Vinz from killing a person at one point. But in the end, it is Hubert who pulls the trigger. And then we have Vinz, the Jew.

The whole cast is great, but Vincent Cassel as Vinz is easily the greatest one, as he has the most complex character. Vinz isn't really a person, as he is trying to be someone else. The thing is that he has been wearing a mask so long, that he has forgotten he even wears one. He tries to be a tough, scary and threatening thug. He doesn't only act like one to everyone around him, but even to himself, as seen in the scene where he talks to himself in the mirror. His one goal in the whole film is to kill someone, to prove to his friends that he is tough, but when he does get the chance to kill someone, his mask slips, creating one of the most powerful moments in the film.

You could say that La Haine is a film about police brutality and racism, as it opens with a montage of riots, but for me, it uses these two themes as jumping of points to explore the full picture. La Haine also explores how drugs impact the people that use them, and the dangers of weapons, with Kassovitz making the gun into a mystical object, one that can create violence, chaos and death.

One of the major themes of La Haine is insignificance. At one point, Vinz says: "I feel like an ant lost in an intergalactic space." I think the suppression of the races of Vinz, Hubert and Saïd make all of them feel like they don't belong in the world. They feel insignificant, and as Vinz said, an ant lost in an infinite space. And the feeling of insignificance, can create many other feelings, like sadness, depression, and most importantly anger. Kassovitz and cinematographer Pierre Aim uses the camera to isolate the characters, most notably in one shot where focus is used amazingly to completely separate the characters from the city in the background.

La Haine does also ask a very vital question for films about police brutality: Are some of the members of the police bad if they are only doing their job? In one scene, the trio decides to visit Abdel, one of their friends who were harmed in the riots, in the hospital, but a policeman won't let them in, as Abdel is in a coma, and his family is there too. Vinz creates chaos as usual, but one of their friends come and stop everything before it gets too violent. When driving the trio away from the hospital, he says: "Did you have to create such a mess? They were only doing their job!" In the whole film, every policeman is treated like they are a monster by the citizens. Just because a few are rotten, does that mean the whole bunch is?

My personal favorite thing about La Haine is the structure. Kassovitz said that the whole film was built around the ending, which creates an unusual structure, but an effective one also. I won't hesitate in calling it one of the most structurally perfect films ever made.

Kassovitz was very clearly inspired by Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. Do The Right Thing explores racial tensions, takes place in one day, is made up of random sequences, and eventually explodes into a violent climax. The difference between La Haine and Do The Right Thing is that La Haine explores a wider selection of themes, and only follows three characters, while Do The Right Thing follows maybe a dozen.

In Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee and editor Barry Alexander Brown use some clever techniques and editing to tie the subplots together, but how does Kassovitz and editor Scott Stevenson connect the random events together? With a shot showing the time, with the sound of ticking in the background. With this, Kassovitz makes you understand that La Haine is literally a cinematic time-bomb that can explode into violence at any moment. And the knowledge that the film can break into violence at any point creates constant rising tension.

If there is one scene that best presents the constant rising tension for me, it's the scene where the trio visit Asterix, a quite unhinged cocaine user. He starts performing Russian roulette on himself to scare them, which freaks Vinz out, which makes Asterix force Vinz to perform Russian roulette on himself, which makes the whole situation turn into a mess. There are so many risks in this whole scene. Asterix could accidentally shoot himself, Asterix could make Vinz accidentally shoot himself, Vinz could shoot Asterix, and Asterix could shoot himself. But everything goes alright, and the film continues.

One of the main motifs of the film is the story of a man who jumps from a building and keeps repeating to himself: "So far, so good". That's how this film is structured. Every scene builds unbelievable tension, only to release it, and continue to the next scene. But you know that it will at one point land.

And let's just talk about how brilliant the ending is. Films are structured in a way where they start with a problem, and by the end, the problem is resolved. La Haine starts with a problem, the problem being the ticking bomb that is the three main characters, and then lures you into thinking that the problem is solved. But that is immediately followed by the sound of ticking, making you realize that the bomb hasn't stop working, and the problem has not been solved. And then it explodes, creating another problem. La Haine presents an angry and lost society filled with hatred, a society where the sound of KRS-One's "Sound Of Da Police" echoes in the streets endlessly. The world of La Haine is a world where problems never are solved.

Rating: 10/10

Next Review: Vertigo