La Haine

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La Haine
La Haine cover, with the tagline Jusqu'ici tout va bien… ("So far, so good…")
Directed by	Mathieu Kassovitz
Written by	Mathieu Kassovitz
Starring	Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui
Music by	Assassin
Distributed by	Canal+
Release date(s)	May 31, 1995
Running time	96 min.
Language	French
Budget	15 million F (2.3 million €)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

La Haine ("Hate") is a French black-and-white film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, released in 1995. It is a dark urban thriller which has been called France's answer to Do the Right Thing. It explores themes of racism, violence and disaffected youth in modern suburban Paris. A riot has broken out in a suburban ghetto, and been quelled by the police. The film depicts 24 hours in the lives of three teenage friends in that suburb.

It has similar themes and is therefore comparable to films such as Kids, The Basketball Diaries, Ken Park, and A Clockwork Orange.

1 Plot and characters
2 Impact of the film
3 Availability of the Film
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Plot and characters

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Vinz (Vincent Cassel), who is Jewish, is filled with rage. He sees himself as a thug ready to win respect or take it by killing a cop, modeled after Robert DeNiro's "Travis Bickle" from the American film Taxi Driver. Hubert (Hubert Koundé) is a black boxer, who quietly contemplates the ghetto and the hate he sees around him. Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), an Arab, is the trio's constantly-talking voice but not necessarily of reason; Said tries to find middle ground between his two friends' response to life and the ghetto. A friend of theirs, called Abdel Ichaha, who has been beaten up in police custody, lies in a coma. Vinz finds a policeman's gun, lost in the riots that preface the film, and vows that if their friend dies from his injuries, he will use it to kill a policeman. This sets off a series of events that take the three down a path of destruction. Travelling in to central Paris from the suburbs where they live, the three friends find themselves viewed as social outsiders, and having missed the last train back out to the projects, they are effectively locked out in the city. Trying, unsuccessfully, to return to their home, they are obliged to sleep in a shopping center. In the morning, they learn that their friend has died in hospital. For a moment it seems as if Vinz will go through with his boast when they are confronted by a group of skinheads, but when actually faced with the frightening power and possibility of killing one of the "skins," Vinz makes himself ill and cannot go through with it. As day breaks again and they are returning to their homes, Vinz gives Hubert the gun as a conciliatory gesture. Hubert walks away from Vinz and Saïd, but is drawn back to them shortly afterwards when he hears a car pull up. When he sees that it's a cop car, he walks quickly towards them. Vinz is harassed by the same racist police officer he met in the preface; and the cop's careless grip on his gun leads him (accidentally?) to shoot Vinz in the head. Hubert pulls his gun on the cop. In the final scene, Hubert points the gun at the cop, and the cop points his gun to Hubert. The end result is ambiguous, and the camera cuts back to Saïd who closes his eyes, then one hears two gunblasts as the screen goes black.

[edit] Impact of the film

Director Mathieu Kassovitz delivers a powerfully emotional comment on the state of French society and the problems caused by urban deprivation and its underlying causes (mainly, racism of the French police). La Haine was praised for strong performances by all three main actors, especially Cassel, whose portrayal of Vinz launched him to stardom.

The film was a huge commercial success and provoked much debate in France over its unflinching presentation of urban and police violence. The then-prime minister Alain Juppé arranged a special screening and ordered his entire cabinet to watch the film; police guards at the screening at Cannes turned their backs on the director, cast and crew as they walked past in protest of its portrayal of police brutality. Kassovitz won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996 and the movie was nominated for the Palme d'Or; the film also picked up the César Award for Best Picture.

The British band Asian Dub Foundation recorded a track called La Haine as a tribute to the film.

It is said that Kassovitz based the script on the actual death of 22-year-old French Arab Malik Oussekine, who was beaten to death by police following a 1986 university demonstration. However, in interviews Kassovitz has said that the idea came to him after a young Zairian, Makomé Bowole, was shot and killed at point blank range while in police custody and handcuffed to a radiator - the officer was reported to have been angered by Makomé's words, and had been threatening him when the gun went off accidentally.

The film prompted something of a backlash from French audiences, who questioned its authenticity. The director was accused of being an outsider who was merely fascinated by the urban culture represented.

This film has been put on the syllabus for A-level Film Studies, as well as french studies for specific universities, in the UK as a part of study of foreign films.

[edit] Availability of the Film

La Haine remained out of issue for many years in the United States despite its ranking in the IMDb Top 250.[1]. However, it will be released on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection in April 2007.

Also it has been shown on many Charter Communications Channels.

An HD DVD version has also been released.