The stereotype of America is that everyone is successful and money is made at ease. brother who is an authority figure. down of Hubert's gym by rioters, leaves us with a sense of despair and a society imploding; me is at the crux of the film's message - you cannot sit by and watch society falling, as it is The riot police arent racist, theyre riot police. soon as they reach Paris there are many more shots using shallow focus to show that they are His fracturesociale trilogy (Mtisse, 1993;LaHaine, 1995 andAssassin(s), 1997),firmlyplaces Jewsin a present-dayParisianworking-class milieu, far removed from the professional stereotypes usually found in Anglo-American film. When La Haine premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995, it made an immediate impact. (But Kassovitz didnt have drones in 1995. Les Misrables is very overtly the offspring of La Haine in that it tells a similar story of social unrest in the Paris banlieues, only this time from the perspective of three policemen who are, like La Haines central trio, from a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds. important part of the text, women are not seen outside in the La Banlieue, but are at the centre an extremely intelligent take on an idiotic reality, The film has not aged well, and Deans performance seems more like marked-down Brando than the birth of an important talent., an essay by Naomi Fry championing its ongoing relevance, La Haine is re-released in selected UK cinemas today. Unusually, Vinzis blond and blue-eyed. city where they obviously dont belong and so cannot see further into the future in the city. Meanwhile Swedish director Gabriela Pichlers 2018 filmAmateursreferences it even more overtly: Pichler told me she was directly inspired by scenes from Kassovitzs film like the one with the TV team visiting the suburbs filming the three guys and how the reaction looked from the TV-camera POV. The film tells the story of a small town that has employed marketers to make a promotional video to encourage a German discount supermarket to open up shop. The young men in the film objectify women and are unable to treat them with shown by the constant use of face off shots between characters, these are Tommy the Clown implements a company, and later a style known as clowning. that is taken up by adults and children of all ages, backgrounds, and physical statuses within the community. bears out in the scene where the news crew want to interview the teenagers from the van. people in La Banlieue. (Heard about the guy who fell from a skyscraper? which is used to disorientate the audience and make them aware of the changes in La Haine had a huge impact on French society leading newspapers to discuss poverty in the outer cities and provoking politicians from President Jacques Chirac to National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen to reference it but it also changed cinema. For decades, the global perception of French cinema was dominated by Gallic stereotypes of bourgeois-bohme Parisians, navel-gazing against the backdrop of the Champs-lyses or a well-to-do caf. change. Although the framing of shots is important in any film production, it seems to be of key Not police brutality, nor the social conditions in Noisy-la-Haine, as one newspaper put it the poverty and boredom that may have led Belkacem Belhabib to steal the motorbike that he fatally crashed into a set of traffic lights. I just wanted to make it easy for my father to understand what was going on in the projects, he says. However, as is so often the case with the greatest films, La Haine only seems to get even better with each passing year. way of highlighting the underlying themes of the film. The movie is bookended with the famous non-joke about the guy who falls off a skyscraper and, as he falls, people can hear him optimistically murmuring: So far, so good so far, so good A brutal landing is imminent, the movie implies, a horrible violent reckoning of racial injustice. This is clearly illustrated in a scene in an art gallery, precisely the sort of upper-middle-class arty space in which cinematic Jewsarelocated. We also feel his shame that he does nothing, when the officers leave the room and Sad and Hubert, both of African origin, would be considered outsiders in the group andin the eyes of right-wing xenophobesproblematic to French society. exploring the responses to life in La Banlieue of the 3 main characters and raising questions This use of cinematography clearly highlights the divide in French culture. Caught between two societiesthat of the traditional, privileged French class and that of his friends who find themselves abandoned by this outdated definitionVinz at one point makes a very telling remark where he asks Sad if he wants to be the next Arab to be killed in a police station. And all of a sudden, the gilet jaunes realise: Oh shit, its not cos [the banlieue rioters] were black, its because they were fighting for something. But, back then, it was: You can do that to the black kids, but not to us. And now they go crazy. La Haine is a movie that is showing us another face of Paris from a very realistic perspective. Kassovitz believed in the hip-hop mantra of edutainment where social awareness and style met. A searing study of working-class Parisian youth living in the citys housing projects, it earned rave reviews, with Variety calling it an extremely intelligent take on an idiotic reality and the then 27-year-old Mathieu Kassovitz winning Best Director for what was only his second film. On his way past each floor he says to himself, so far, so good, but what's important isnt the fall, it's how you land.) In a dazzling visual effect, the Earth goes up in flames. He brags about avenging his friend, Abdel, who was killed by the police during a riot. La haine remains a renowned and significant example of modern French film, primarily for two related reasons: Firstly because it manages to perfectly capture the state of contemporary French cinema, whilst secondly expertly portraying the state of contemporary French society. In the movie "La Haine" it is quite possible to talk about traditional stereotypes concerning race, class and/or culture. This mirrors Kassovitzs motivation for making the film following the death of a man chained to a radiator by the police. Taghmaoui carved out a solid international career as a blockbuster bit-player, and Kound has been largely restricted to theatre and TV soaps. Stereotypes In La Haine . brotherhood) between the characters. the other two at particular points,: at the beginning of the film Vinz is in the centre of the two Which choice, A or B, makes the sentence correct? Mathieu Kassovitzs celebrated story of inequality in a Paris banlieue is a timely rerelease in the Black Lives Matter era. pdf, 36.07 KB. With the heritage of 1990s riots opposing police brutality and the inequality between race and class alike still very much alive, perhaps it is shameful that the controversial issues raised in La haine remain as relevant as they are. It was a couple of weeks after the murder of George Floyd in May that I was contacted by the British Film Institute asking if I wanted to programme a season of films around the film, to mark its 25th anniversary. In the same way, the Molotov cocktail landing on planet Earth in La Haine still resonates as a symbolic provocation that the only way to create lasting positive change is to wipe out what has gone before and start again from scratch. The characters ended up taking the actors first names: Vinz (Vincent Cassel), the Jewish hothead who, after a riot, finds a cops Smith & Wesson and vows to take revenge for the latest police beating; Hubert (Kound), the ruminative black boxer and small-time dealer who tries to get his friend to drop the bluster; Sad (Taghmaoui), the Arab joker who mediates between them. importance to Matheiu Kassovltz when directing La Haine. All rights reserved. James Dean as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause remains one of Hollywoods most iconic screen rebels (Credit: Alamy). It's a movie that sets fire to the comfortable middle-class outings of much French cinema, turning the gaze beyond the Priphrique ring road to the Parisian . The essay is answering the question: "Examinez le personnage de Vinz dans La Haine et . View. will lead him by Hubert - "hate breeds Hate". in the first shot of the three main characters in Paris, it shows a clear divide between the It won best director at Cannes in 1995, but the police believing it to be a polemic against them turned their backs on the team when providing a ceremonial guard at the festival. After this episode, we seperate Vinz The language used is accessible enough whilst still showing an ability to manipulate complex structures. For decades, the global perception of French cinema was dominated by Gallic stereotypes of bourgeois-bohme Parisians, navel-gazing against the backdrop of the Champs-lyses or a well-to-do caf. These stereotypes are so well-known that the . He didnt get why I was hanging out with black guys: Youre a little Jewish guy, what are you doing? Dad was the Hungary-born director Peter Kassovitz, his mum the film editor Chantal Rmy; Kassovitz grew up in central Paris, but gravitated towards the banlieue as a teen thanks to his involvement in the citys nascent B-boy scene. A model essay (.pdf version), which I have used with my students in their early days of essay writing as an example. This could be a procedural about the French police force's endless crusade against crime in the suburbs around Paris. How did he get that shot?). Although the riots in the banlieues are rooted in a protest against what is perceived to be unjust behavior on the part of the police, the only clear result they are producing is more police brutality and the thoughtless destruction of their own environment. I was so mad at the whole situation, says Kassovitz today. For instance, Hubert is a reformed character who is desperate to escape the This is compounded by our insights into their cramped living conditions. Hubert's mother sewing and cooking) Brotherly love for/protection of sisters Vinz and Hubert care about their education Kassovitz mentioned in an interview that the women of the cites are always someone's sister personal and emotional attachments Rather, they are just modern cowboys lone rangers who are not symbols of rebellion in any meaningful sense, but instead paragons of self-indulgent individualism. Filmed on location in the cit (estate) of Les Muguets in Chanteloup-les-Vignes, 30km to the north-west of Paris, La Haine met with broad approval from the people it depicted. is due to how each of the characters are framed and shown in the centre of the frame between And what an introduction it is. cultures of Paris between the city and the surrounding districts as it is a very obvious effect Inversely, the Jewish Vinz defies the inflammatory stereotype of meekness and submissiveness by being the most volatile and arrogant of his friends. et il encourage les participants lutter contre leurs propres a priori et leurs prjugs et strotypes ngatifs. But La Haine was not dry sermonising, it was a proper coup de cinma. the riots or manages to stay out of harms way. I originally found it If we didnt do what we did, it would be duck-hunting season. We learn also that he has a brother in jail. While the band of cinphiles that pioneered the French New Wave found immense artistic value in the auteur cinema of the likes of Howard Hawks and Nicholas Ray, Kassovitz visibly borrows and pays homage to tropes of New Hollywood cinemamost notably Martin Scorseses Mean Streetsand contemporary hip-hop culture of 1970s and 1980s America. They asked me questions where I said: Dont ask me that, go to the projects and talk to the guys there. But they didnt want to talk to them.. The trio loll on their turf, then head into central Paris, oblivious to approaching catastrophe. Five stars for Charlie Kaufmans latest. Your zany brother came to the meeting ______, (A) with a list of complaints However, the young officer at the Vinz is the character who appears to be We engage in this behavior constantly in order to construct these favorable outcomes specifically in terms of race, class, and gender.