LA HAINE (1995)

When I first watched La Haine / Hatred almost a decade ago, the black-and-white colour scheme seemed like an ideal way of highlighting the film’s heavy visual stylisation. Now that it has been almost 30 years since its release, it appears as a prophetic decision made to emphasise the film’s timelessness. The French film was inspired by protests from the 1980s, including the killing of Malik Oussekine, a 22-year-old beaten to death by police, as well as the 1993 killing of Makomé M’Bowolé, who was shot in the head by a deputy while in police custody. Riots took place during the time of filming La Haine, with this protest-heavy country never yielding in this regard in the intervening decades between then and now.

The most striking visual, tonal, and thematic similarities between this film and any other can be found in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie that starts off as comedic and exuberant even as its characters practically bubble with fury, which ultimately spills over as a community finds itself shattered by an unspeakable act of violence, and then must confront their self-control, belief in other people, and how to navigate an unjust world. In both films, the climactic act of violence that makes them so memorable feels like an inevitable yet shocking occurrence, but it’s far from this alone that binds their divergent tones. In La Haine, as in Lee’s masterpiece, the dedication to documenting the woes, grievances, and misgivings of a community is always paramount.

Whereas the colour scheme in Do the Right Thing emphasised the brutal heat and the delirious anger it provoked in people, binding them together while also bringing them further apart than ever, La Haine’s black-and-white colour scheme simultaneously limits the chance of visual differences between its many characters, and separates them even further from one another by the colour of their skin. Unlike Lee’s film, the three main characters—Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), and Hubert (Hubert Koundé)—refuse to be divided along racial lines, showing some progression from the cinematic playground conjured in Do the Right Thing. (One other shared element from these cinematic playgrounds is just how stylised the direction is. Director Mathieu Kassovitz’s camera movements in particular are a marvel throughout La Haine, with a number of shots that are both head-scratching and awe-inspiring. It is guaranteed to leave first-time viewers questioning how these sweeping camera movements were achieved, especially given how seamless these moments are).

Housing blocks in Harlem have been replaced by the banlieues, suburbs that have a connotation in France for providing low-income housing to ethnic minorities and the country’s immigrant population, creating a poverty trap of an insulated socio-economic environment. This is where the three drifters in this film have grown up, with this home being one of the most vital aspects of their identities. It has formed how they conceptualise themselves, the world, and their place within it. When a camera crew stops to film and ask questions of the trio as they lounge at a public park, their first instinct is to hurl abuse at the crew. They’re too perceptive not to see that they’re being objectified, like exotic animals in a zoo exhibit, but their deference to threats and violence only confirms the base perceptions that the crew (and those who might watch such footage on TV screens in the safety of their homes) have of them.

That’s no surprise, since La Haine is a self-fulfilling prophecy. This idea is baked into the structure and core of the film, which is bookended by a morbid joke about a man falling from a giant drop off a building. “So far, so good”, he remarks as he tumbles through the air, too stupid to recognise that regardless of his immediate health, death is a swiftly-approaching inevitability. No matter what these three characters do, they are simply building towards an inevitable outcome, one that’s cruel, swift, and violent.

Still, it’s only right for them to rage against their fate. Hubert is easily the most mature and well-meaning of the group, insisting to the others that hate begets hate, and continually criticising Vinz’s obsession with murdering a police officer. Vinz was the one to discover a revolver dropped by a police officer during one of the nights of clashes between police and protestors, and insists that he will enact revenge if a protestor who is in intensive care after being beaten by the police, Abdel Ichaha (Abdel Ahmed Ghili), dies from his injuries.

Vinz might be militant about his cause, but if he showed nearly the same level of dedication towards getting a job or bettering himself, he might not be such an aimless layabout. This is even more true of Saïd, who scabs food from his friends, commits petty theft in shops, and sees no reason to squander his life for a cause. Only Hubert lives for something noble, longing to escape the banlieue, but even he demonstrates that he can be something of an agitator. All three men have divergent backgrounds and beliefs, yet their unity as members of the banlieue is the most uniting force in their lives. Unfortunately, it’s an association that, in this gritty world where petty crime and police brutality is rampant, can only lead to ruin. The question isn’t whether or not these men can change their lives and turn things around. The question is whether it is right that they should have had such little opportunity to do so.

It’s remarkable how easily Kassovitz endears you to these petty criminals, especially when there are quite a few occasions where their behaviour is reprehensible. It having been years since I watched the film, I had forgotten all about a scene where Saïd and Vinz steal from an Asian man’s shop and racially abuse him, or Saïd and Hubert being assaulted and demeaned by police officers after being arrested. It’s not that La Haine is this light, buoyant affair that made me forget about these scenes, but rather that it does such an excellent job at making one care about these aimless drifters, and feel such heartbreak at its shocking denouement, that to consider either scene in retrospect takes something away from the crushing blow that is this film’s ending. But they are necessary interactions in their own right, padding out the day-in-the-life approach that makes this film so memorable.

Humour goes a long way towards conveying the cynicism of this heart-stopping final moment, where the world hangs upon a precipice of the film’s shattered reality, its characters’ dreams having crumpled alongside it. The morbid joke that bookends the film finds a companion in the even bleaker anecdote happily delivered by a random elderly stranger, who comes across our three main characters in a bathroom. He tells them about a man he knew who froze to death due to his need to be discreet about his bowel movements. It is absolutely hilarious to witness this complete nobody take charge of these characters’ conversation, and La Haine as a whole, for a few minutes. But it also signals the bleak outlook that is confirmed by the film’s final few seconds, where time appears to stand still.

The acting from this trio is a masterclass in itself, delivered in conjunction with sharp screenwriting that makes these characters impossible not to love, with constant bickering and silly banter making them seem like an odd couple. They may disagree and fall out with each other repeatedly, but the care they have for one another is never in doubt. Like many male friendships, this is never uttered, but it is keenly felt all the same (in fact, maybe more so because of this). The film’s comedy is not merely a way of letting viewers’ guards down to assault them with its powerful ending (though it achieves this masterfully). La Haine’s humour also makes us see the value in these characters, their relationships with one another, and how precious every moment is. That latter point is brilliantly emphasised by the recurring visual cue referencing the time of day, with cuts to black to let us know the exact minute and hour across the film’s day-long journey.

This all culminates in Kassovitz laying bare his searing critique of France’s policing system, showcasing a world which insists that the major flaw of these protagonists’ thinking is in the assumption that their lives have any intrinsic value when forced to contend with state violence. Hate may beget hate, but that does not stop Hubert from being abused, just as Vinz’s character development means so little when his life is meaningless in the grander context of government-sanctioned brutality. While La Haine’s ending isn’t as moving to watch the second time around, and its journey not as meaningful, it remains a worthy cinematic classic, masterfully crafted, imbued with great feeling, and sadly still relevant.

FRANCE | 1995 | 98 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | BLACK & WHITE | FRENCH • YIDDISH

Cast & Crew

writer & director: Mathieu Kassovitz.
starring: Vincent Cassell, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui, Marc Duret, Benoît Magimel, Abdel Ahmed Ghili, François Levantal & Vincent Lindon.