La Haine (Hate)

Title: La Haine (Hate)
Rating: 4.5/5
Genre: Drama, Crime
Starring: Vincent Cassel
Language: French

“Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good... so far so good... so far so good. How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land!”

When confronted with a piece as overwhelming as this, certainly as the reviewer, it seems like a mammoth task to do justice to, for whilst this may have racism as a key underlining plot it in no way points any fingers. It doesn’t lay the blame with any one group, nor does it exaggerate the situation. A raw and brutally honest portrayal of suburban life in Paris, away from the eyes of the majority focused on the city, it shows a racial tension being pushed to its breaking point, and it’s only a matter of time until the situation can be ignored no longer.

Perhaps overlooked for its use of black and white cinematography, it’s rather ironic that the situation depicted is anything but. Following a day in the lives of three young friends; the well-intentioned yet perhaps young and naïve Arabic Saïd, he is often making jokes and trying to fit in with those around him, a strong sense that he wishes to make something of himself, and with no parents around to help him. The short tempered you Jewish man Vinz, obsessed with gaining respect from his peers, believing the police to be the enemy and incapable of fathoming that perhaps they are also there to protect them. He is simultaneously afraid and filled with hate, set out to prove the riots are not all talk and no action, vowing that if their friend Abdel (recently sent to hospital in a critical condition as a result of a police ‘interrogation’) dies, he would have his retribution, constantly brewing up fear in hatred in a chain reaction to those who get in his way. And then there is perhaps the most intelligent and worldly of them, the coloured man Hubert who poured his heart into the creation of a gymnasium only to have it torn down, watching the tension and hatred arise on both sides remaining impartial he longs to escape before things spiral out of control.

It could be relatively easy to simply take the side of the youths presented, but rather than portray them as innocent we can clearly observe the mischief they encounter, as well as the manner the police can take things out of proportion, making unwarranted arrests, showing the rookie cop who is himself surprised at the racist actions of his superiors as well as the friend of Saïd who is himself a policeman, it demonstrates that on both sides it isn’t the majority, but rather the few that gives the rest a bad name, from the revenge seeking brothers of Abdel to the racist police of the suburbs, it leads down a slippery slope of racial hatred, a fact that even the hot-headed Vinz eventually comes to realise.

Everything is done to promote realism, the acting proving to be phenomenal from all three characters, treading the line of displaying their desires, hopes and emotions without trying to forcefully make you pity them. This film isn’t about taking sides, or trying to make you pity those living in poverty, with parents too busy to pay enough attention to their children, and who can barely afford to eat. Beneath all the apparent tension is a simple notion of hope. The fact that three characters of clearly different backgrounds can set aside any differences or racial prejudices demonstrates a sense of unity, that they are all in the same situation.

In true ‘Brechtian’ style, the film is shot so as to intentionally alienate the viewer from the situations occurring, so as to be capable of observing the overall situation without becoming too emotionally attached to any characters featured, presenting to the viewer a ‘cycle of hate,’ between those in the suburbs and the police. Some will look upon this film as nothing more than an example of what could be, a radical ‘worst case scenario’ of what should never be and what the government would never let the situation descend to, but almost exactly a decade later, we can see he was right all along. In the words of Hubert himself, “Hate breeds Hate.”