[1995 Paris Sud Minute C Pas Bien
Saija Grzegorek
La Haine opens with a montage of news footage depicting urban riots in a banlieue in the commune of Chanteloup-les-Vignes near Paris. In the aftermath of the riots, a local man named Abdel Ichaha is gravely injured in police custody and is in intensive care. The riots escalate, leading to a siege of the local police station and the loss of a police officer's revolver. The film follows the lives of three friends of Abdel, who are all young men from immigrant families, over approximately twenty consecutive hours.
Vinz, a young Jewish man with an aggressive temperament, seeks revenge for Abdel's condition. He harbors a deep hatred for all police officers and secretly emulates Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver in front of his bathroom mirror. Hubert, an Afro-French boxer and small-time drug dealer, aspires to escape the banlieue and create a better life for himself. However, his boxing gymnasium was destroyed in the riots. Sad, a young North African Muslim, acts as a mediator between Vinz and Hubert.
The three friends lead a directionless daily routine and frequently find themselves under police surveillance. After a rooftop gathering which is broken up by the police, Vinz reveals that he has discovered the .44 Magnum revolver lost during the riot. He plans to use it to kill a police officer if Abdel dies. While Hubert disapproves, Vinz secretly takes the gun with him. They visit Abdel in the hospital but are turned away by the police. Sad is arrested after they aggressively refuse to leave, but he is later released with the assistance of a familiar police officer.
A disagreement arises between Vinz and Hubert regarding their perspectives on policing and violence, leading them to part ways temporarily. Sad accompanies Vinz, while Hubert briefly returns home. They reunite at another gathering in the banlieue, which quickly descends into chaos when Abdel's brother attempts to murder a police officer as an act of revenge. This triggers a confrontation with the police, and the group narrowly escapes after Vinz almost shoots a riot officer. They board a train to Paris, where their interactions with both friendly and hostile Parisians escalate several situations into dangerous confrontations.
In a public restroom, they encounter a survivor of the gulag who tells them a story about a man who froze to death after refusing to relieve himself in public near their transport train and failing to re-board in time. The trio is perplexed by the meaning of the story.
Later, they visit Astrix, a frequent cocaine user who owes money to Sad. This visit leads to a violent confrontation, as Astrix appears to force Vinz to play Russian roulette, although the gun is secretly unloaded. They encounter sadistic plainclothes police officers who arrest Sad and Hubert while Vinz manages to escape. The police officers verbally and physically abuse the duo before imprisoning them until late at night, causing the three friends to miss the last train from Saint-Lazare station and spend the night on the streets.
After being kicked out of an art gallery and failing to hotwire a car, the trio takes shelter in a shopping mall. They hear from a news broadcast that Abdel has died. They make their way to a rooftop, where they insult skinheads and policemen. However, they encounter the same group of skinheads who mercilessly attack Sad and Hubert. Vinz intervenes, holding one of the skinheads at gunpoint. Despite his initial plan to execute him, Vinz hesitates and ultimately lets the skinhead go, prompted by Hubert's astute provocation that challenges Vinz's gangster facade and reveals his true nature.
In the early morning, the trio returns home, and Vinz hands the gun over to Hubert. Vinz and Sad encounter a plainclothes officer whom Vinz had previously insulted while on a rooftop with his friends. The officer seizes Vinz, threatening him with a loaded gun against his head. Hubert rushes to their aid, but the officer accidentally discharges his gun, killing Vinz. A tense standoff ensues between Hubert and the officer, as Sad closes his eyes. A single gunshot is heard, leaving it unclear who fired the shot or who may have been struck.
This climactic standoff is accompanied by a voice-over of Hubert's slightly modified opening lines ("It's about a society in free fall...") and the recurring phrase jusqu'ici tout va bien ("so far so good"). The film portrays a microcosm of French society's descent from hostility into senseless violence, emphasizing that despite appearances, all is not well and the future remains uncertain.
Kassovitz has said that the idea came to him when a young Zairian, Makom M'Bowol, was shot in 1993. He was killed at point blank range while in police custody and handcuffed to a radiator. The officer was reported to have been angered by M'Bowol's words, and had been threatening him when the gun went off accidentally.[3] Kassovitz began writing the script on 6 April 1993, the day M'Bowol was shot. He was also inspired by the case of Malik Oussekine, a 22-year-old student protester who died after being badly beaten by the riot police after a mass demonstration in 1986, in which he did not take part.[4] Oussekine's death is also referred to in the opening montage of the film.[5] Mathieu Kassovitz included his own experiences; he took part in riots, he acts in a number of scenes and includes his father Peter in another.
The majority of the filming was done in the Parisian suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes. Unstaged footage was used for this film, taken from 1986 to 1995; riots still took place during the time of filming. To actually film in the banlieues, Kassovitz, the production team and the actors, moved there for three months prior to the shooting as well as during actual filming.[6] Due to the film's controversial subject matter, seven or eight local French councils refused to allow the film crew to film on their territory. Kassovitz was forced to temporarily rename the script Droit de Cit.[7] Some of the actors were not professionals and the film includes many situations that were based on real events.[6]
The music of the film was handled by French hardcore rap group Assassin, whose song "Nique la Police" (translated as "Fuck the Police") was featured in one of the scenes of the film[citation needed]. One of the members of Assassin, Mathias "Rockin' Squat" Crochon, is the brother of Vincent Cassel, who plays Vinz in the film.[5]
Upon its release, La Haine received widespread critical acclaim and was well received in France and abroad. The film was shown at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival where it enjoyed a standing ovation. Kassovitz was awarded the Best Director prize at the festival.[5] The film opened at number one at the French box office with a gross of 12.5 million Francs for the week.[8] It was number one for four consecutive weeks. The film had a total of 2,042,070 admissions in France where it was the 14th highest-grossing film of the year.[1]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Hard-hitting and breathtakingly effective, La Haine takes an uncompromising look at long-festering social and economic divisions affecting 1990s Paris."[9] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "raw, vital and captivating".[10] Wendy Ide of The Times stated that La Haine is "[o]ne of the most blisteringly effective pieces of urban cinema ever made."[11]
After the film was well received upon its release in France, Alain Jupp, who was Prime Minister of France at the time, commissioned a special screening of the film for the cabinet, which ministers were required to attend. A spokesman for the Prime Minister said that, despite resenting some of the anti-police themes present in the film, Jupp found La Haine to be "a beautiful work of cinematographic art that can make us more aware of certain realities."[7]
La Haine was available on VHS in the United States, but was not released on DVD until The Criterion Collection released a two-disc edition in 2007. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray versions have also been released in Europe, and Criterion released the film on Blu-ray in May 2012. The release includes audio commentary by Kassovitz, an introduction by actress Jodie Foster, "Ten Years of La Haine", a documentary that brings together cast and crew a decade after the film's landmark release, a featurette on the film's banlieue setting, production footage, and deleted and extended scenes, each with an afterword by Kassovitz.[14]
Last week, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced a raft of new government spending on security in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack. The plan included the creation of more than 2500 new jobs in the law, justice and defence sectors, and the ongoing surveillance of roughly 3000 individuals.
Days earlier, the same media outlets were reflecting on the meaning of the 'Je suis Charlie' marches across the country and the symbolic message of unity they seemed to embody. Ironically, all this deliberation seems have to pushed to one side any commentary on the widespread political alienation felt among French migrant populations, and the extent to which this has become a wellspring for violent radicalisation.
To understand something of this alienation it is necessary to consider the marginal social and economic standing of France's second and third generation of post-war Arab and African immigrant populations.
These communities are often concentrated in the infamous banlieue neighbourhoods of France, a shorthand reference to suburbs which fringe many of France's major urban centres and are characterised by uniform and soulless public housing edifices. In media discourse les banlieues are frequently stigmatised as migrant enclaves, plagued by epidemics of crime, gang violence and rioting. The youth in these places describe their neighbourhoods as the 'occupied territories', voicing the idea that French state authority is unrecognised there, an intrusion that is resisted in the same way Palestinian populations respond to the imposition of Israel authority.
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