1995 Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz, Hubert, and Said -- a Jew, African, and an Arab -- give human faces to France's immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point.
Vincent Cassel Hubert Koundé Saïd Taghmaoui Abdel Ahmed Ghili Souleymane Dicko Héloïse Rauth Benoît Magimel Edouard Montoute Marc Duret Joseph Momo Vincent Lindon Christophe Rossignon Mathieu Kassovitz Philippe Nahon Zinedine Soualem Rywka Wajsbrot Olga Abrego Laurent Labasse Choukri Gabteni Karin Viard Karim Belkhadra
Studio Image Cofinergie 6 Egg Pictures Kasso Inc. Productions La Sept Cinéma Les Productions Lazennec PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Canal+
Frames in Black and White, showing a mirror to the society which is still relevant today after 22 years of its release. Vinz stands in front of the mirror uttering the famous lines from Taxi Driver. He is angry towards society and how it is in a free fall.
La Haine starts after the riots which happened because one of their friend Abdel was brutalized by the police shortly before the riot and lies in a coma.
Vinz is filled with rage, he wants to prove something to himself and to others on how gutsy he is. He just wants his characteristic to be known as Gangster who killed a cop.
Hubert is a boxer and more mature from Vinz…
Kids by way of Tarantino. La Haine, while having a potent sociopolitical message, was more impressive to me in its crisp, clean style - hardly befitting the gritty subject matter, but oh, so pleasing to watch. Director Mathieu Kassovitz is clearly at home behind the camera and knows precisely how long to linger on a shot to maximize tension, or whip around a crowd to make a localized struggle seem much, much larger. Add a script unafraid to pull punches, but perfectly fine filming the mundane to deepen to depressing reality of life in the Parisian projects, and La Haine manages to be unrelentingly brutal without an over-reliance on graphic violence.
What is startling about La Haine's script is how…
La Haine, which translates to "hate", is one of the most powerful and affecting films ever made. It's a modern masterpiece of emotion, bringing the viewer on a ride of images and sounds that enhance the incredible characters brought to the screen. It's criminally under-seen, which is a sad thing to think about. La Haine deserves every ounce of praise and adoration.
The Awesome: The characters, the writing, the cinematography, the direction, the acting, the opening, the way it tackles the issues of modern society, the conclusion, the DJ sequence, the rooftop scene. I could go on all day about this wonderful masterwork of cinema. La Haine is ultimately about violence, and how these three main characters weave in and…
I'd meant to see La Haine ever since it was released in the cinema. I even rented it once – in the days when I worked in places like the one where it's set – but never got round to watching it.
And I really should have watched it earlier: just as I thought La Règle du Jeu might be easier to appreciate when you're a little older, La Haine strikes me as a film best seen in your teens or twenties.
Young guys on tough estates are kind of the same everywhere, but La Haine seems to take them more seriously than most films & TV. It feels totally real, yet this film also looks fucking cool in a way…
79/100
[originally written on my blog]
Because Kassovitz has done nothing worthwhile since, I was prepared to wonder what the hell I was thinking back then. Instead, I'm wondering what the hell happened, because he fully deserved his Best Director prize at Cannes. If only a tiny fraction of the handheld, slice-of-urban-life indies I endure every year were half as formally accomplished as this freewheeling powder keg. Performances feel credibly spontaneous without ever becoming mired in improvisational awkwardness, and the loose-limbed, episodic structure keeps defusing urgency to invigorating effect. Only the Chekhovian gun and inevitable violent ending disappoint. One-hit wonder.
It’s like Do The Right Thing, Taxi Driver, and God got together and made something perfect. Every shot was a work of art and the acting was positively superb.
“Ever heard the one about the guy who fell off the skyscraper? On his way down he kept saying “so far so good... so far so good... so far so good. How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land!”
96/100
"C’est l’histoire d’une société qui tombe et qui au fur et à mesure de sa chute se répète sans cesse pour se rassurer: jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien...
L'important c'est pas la chute, c'est l'atterrissage."
I have to admit - I wasn’t as thoroughly engaged as I had thought. This Criterion entry was certainly on my list, and the ending scene left me with goosebumps. It’s cool to see young and intense Vincent Cassel in hustle mode.
From a life perspective...
Senseless violence, anyone?
That ending breathed a whole different perspective into the main quote that started the movie. Genuinely impressed.
Brash, energetic, and full of explosiveness. Every scene is so fluidly pieced together, and the gloomy narrative establishes such a tense and desolate atmosphere. The bond between the three main characters feels so convincingly authentic. There are so many outstanding long takes too, fully taking advantage of the sublime camerawork and acting. Love how the film always reminds you of the underlying conflict and animosity even through times of lightheartedness and casual silliness. A forcefully fierce display of the troublesome friction and sentiment at the time
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