#la_haine

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Blogpost #2

I watched this film almost 10 years ago, and the thing that struck me on rewatching, other than how beautifully and at times strangely shot it is, is its atmosphere and style. The pacing is measured, like a piece of music. The film expresses itself through the passion and fury of 90s French hip hop. The city and film create a lot of the sounds off screen - Edith Piaf and NTM (and other French hip-hop that I don’t recognise) coming from cars and stereos. Gunshots, sirens, and percussion scrape under the scenes. And the film begins with real footage of riots, but set to Bob Marley’s Burnin’ and Lootin’. Although this is formally distinct from the rest of the feature, it does bring positivity and humor to the protest, which runs throughout. 

In Donald Glover’s video for This is America, hip hop and politics are blended in a very different setting - although the theme of police brutality has not ended. To me, there is one more layer of self consciousness than in La Haine. Glover is folding the violence against Black life in the U.S. over onto Black cultural power in the U.S. The images are a choreography of scenes that are frightening, triggering, bizarre, stereotypical, and familiar. Without the sound, it would be impossible to tell that for weeks, people were enjoying this track in their cars all across the country. But because these images are in a Childish Gambino video, they bring the protest to the art form itself. 

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Blogpost #2

Tracking a day in the life of the three main characters, La Haine is a visual sociopolitical commentary on violence, culture, immigration, youth, and the search of meaning set in a suburban Paris in the 1990’s. The film’s main characters: Saïd, Vinz, and Hubert, represent a particular segment of the population that remains largely oppressed: immigrants. Centered around the immigrant’s non-integration into the French culture, the film shows a closed culture that says to immigrants they can exist within its territory but will have no future in it. The character’s, exemplifying the youth of the country, are shown living in a state of limbo. The movie turns quickly into a journey of violence incited by the possession of a gun revolver. This particular object takes the character’s lives into different places, friendships, problems with the police, and into the character’s self reflection.

The pace of the movie leads the viewer into feeling close enough to the character’s psyche, particularly to the character of Hubert, who his self reflections are closely portrayed throughout the movie. Contrasting between two kinds of scenes, one where it shows a static composed scene showcasing the characters and its urban background, juxtaposed with various scenes of movement, beginning when the gun is first presented, and their lives are about to change, and showcasing freeing moments across youth culture, cinema, music, and dancing. The photography employed in the movie is impeccable, empowering the film’s storyline all along its runtime. I find the use of black and white, and the lighting used in the movie to be very important stylistic elements, projecting each of the scenes in a steel-like quality that bears comparison to the steel that composes the gun. The gun clearly portrays the looking for some sense of power while the character’s keep searching for some kind of meaning into their lives.

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Blogpost #2 

I grew out of the habit of watching films or television – I rarely like to. I find them too all-consuming or invasive, so I am out of the habit of seeing things. La Haine reminded me in some ways of the Battle of Algiers, the method of regard of scenes of a violent nature, the clock felt akin to a countdown. 

Some things that I noticed: the scenes as they dress and practice in the mirror. How interesting it was to have a hand off in front of the mural with God and Adam’s hands almost touching (I think it’s from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, I could be wrong). How perplexing and sad and predictable that rest and community is so criminalised, it went something to the effect of: “get off the roof,” “there’s no rule, we can be here,” –– some places are “sittable.” Others not, depending on who you are, how you look, how you are presented and perceived. The scene where Hubert is touching his neck at the police station, the circle round of everyone in the station observing them. I loved that moment when Said is on the phone in the washroom, and then the introduction of the fourth man in the washroom, the Siberian work camp and travel in cattle cars. What was with the cow?? 

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Blogpost #2

To be continued:

The opening scene of La Haine sets the tone immediately with documentary news footage of riots in the aftermath of a case of police brutality. We then see clearly how much the climate of violence infiltrates its way at all scales throughout the main three characters lives–how the conversations center on violence, how interactions with the police can be described as war. This is however on a micro scale. Through La Haine we are seeing the interpersonal consequences of being at the opposite end of structural violence and we are seeing the immediate ramifications of said violence, namely death, desperation, destruction.

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BLOG POST #2

Sometimes I wonder how would a reception of a movie change if one were to take out a scene from a movie. How would this movie be seen in cinema history if the final scene was deleted and it would end on this high note. Of a realization that violence is not the answer, that there is a path forward. That the landing can still happen in a good way even after years of falling. Would it have the same impact regarding social barriers and the relationship between police and the people.

Though in the sense of this movie the ending sadly pulls together all the other strings. The slow tumble of people stuck in undeveloped environments. The police brutality often experienced by people living there. The lack of care and understanding from peoples living in better conditions. And how aggression can turn into a deadly encounter by accident.

In a way the whole time movie sets up the final scene in a morbidly enticing way. The constant pointing of guns at each other while being fascinated and scared of the weapon at the same time. The abuse and torture of the police officers in central Paris with the words: “The hardest part is to stop” (or something along those lines). And even then in the last seconds I was hoping for a calmer resolution. That the last scene would be them saying good bye at the train station and learning that there is a way around “La haine attire la haine”. But alas.

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BlogPost 2

La Haine was an intense film that I didn’t really look into much before watching so I didn’t quite know what to expect.  I was quite confused by the music choices throughout the film.  Much of it was in English, starting with the reggae in the opening scene and the hip hop snippets throughout the film.  But as it went on, everything started making more sense because the themes of the music and their cultural associations were being mirrored by the events happening even if they were in France.  The use of hip hop was interesting to me because it went beyond the music, we saw Sayid spray painting the back of a police truck, there’s graffiti all over the walls.  It just made sense, because if a riot is the voice of the oppressed then hip hop culture is the heartbeat.  I don’t remember who it was but I heard someone say they MC because their environment refuses to see them and it felt super relevant to the topic of the film.  Especially with the knowledge that France was one of the earliest and largest markets for this music outside of the US.

Everything in the film felt eerily familiar, this being a ‘95 film and yet a lot of the imagery looked exactly like the Black Lives Matter uprisings/riots of recent years.  Which was a bit disheartening to realize, yet made it easier to connect to at the same time.  But even the film style and shots felt really familiar.  They reminded me a lot of Spike Lee’s early work like She’s Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing.  The focus on people’s faces, the dolly shots, etc.  I noticed also there were a lot of scenes that started with close ups on people’s hands.  Almost as if it’s saying what we do is really important, more important than what we say or think.

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Blogpost 2: La Haine

Watching the French film La Haine by Mathieu Kassovitz was a very emotionally intense experience. Throughout the entire film, there was this constant brooding anger lingering in the atmosphere. Especially fueled by the constant presence of guns and the topic of shooting or being shot, there never really was a section where you could feel a true release of tension.

Starting off with the fatal injury of a fellow comrade in a protest from police brutality, the harsh unforgiving relationship between the poorer areas of Paris and the local police was jarringly established. Through Sayid, Vinz, and Hubert, we get to experience the different ways in which these complicated feelings towards the police as a whole develops and evolves. Sayid has an uncle who is in the police force, so although he developed anger to the police once he learnt about the injury of his friend, he still acknowledges that there are individuals within the police force who aren’t so bad, and his does not direct his anger to them. As for Vinz, being the most physically impulsive of the three and having no positive attachments to anyone within the police, after learning about the injury, all he could think about was getting revenge and killing to make things even. Hubert, on the other hand, was the most mature and logical of the bunch and was able to try to understand where the police was coming from and accept that they were just trying to do their job, and that there was no perceivable advantage that could come from the action of Vinz’s so called revenge. However, as the film progressed, after seeing that in the richer parts of Paris, there existed policemen who were respectful and dutiful, and given the chance to kill a policeman that was a perpetrator of the brutality, Vinz realized that he could not be the same and impose blood on blood. In contrast, although Hubert started off as the calm one, when Vinz relinquishes his pent up hate and decides to give up on his mission to revenge and then proceed to get shot and killed from one of the policemen belonging to the subgroup who are the convicts of brutality, Hubert unhesitatingly pointed the gun to that policeman and pulled the trigger.

I found it really heartbreaking in one scene where a journalism comes by in car and just assumes Sayid, Vinz, and Hubert were partakers in the riot that resulted in the death of a young adult, and does not believe them when they say they were not. The cameraman following the journalist was also non-stop recording this interaction. Getting angered by the journalist’s prodding and forcing a role upon them that they were not, the three did not choose the calmest way to make the journalist leave them alone, so they were captured on camera throwing rocks to the person’s car and cursing towards the journalist and cameraman. I can just imagine the journalist and cameraman using this footage later on to twist the truths and prove that this section of Paris is just infested with ‘troubled youths’ and push the blame away from the police who committed the brutality.

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blogpost #2

Having read this week’s texts before watching La Haine, perhaps violence and power systems were fresher on my mind than they otherwise would have been. This is not to discount the film’s inherent properties - ‘la haine’ translates to ‘hatred’ after all. 

I found it amusing that Vinz spent a lot of his time in the mirror practicing lines from Taxi Driver: “You talkin’ to me??” It’s not surprising, though, that as a young Jewish man who often finds himself on the losing side of class lines, along with his friends, would take to performing anger and intimidation as a survival tactic. Anger, though volatile and sometimes debilitating, is a way to keep moving towards a future, towards some sort of hope. Finding a gun at the crux in time that he did though, made his anger less of a machine and more a time bomb.

As we progress through the story, we see a series of barriers put in place by power structures that made resorting to violence more and more urgent, perhaps. The group is denied seeing their friend in the hospital - strike one.  They have an encounter with plainclothes officers, who abuse them - strike two. They are barred from a public establishment and have no access to transportation - strike three. Not that this is baseball - but we see just how easy it is, as the story progresses, for circumstances to be stacked against them. 

Violent encounter after violent encounter, it is hard to imagine being in such a precarious position and not rely on anger to keep you moving. Otherwise what is there? Despair? 

In the end it seems the efforts of the group (to remain sane human beings) are futile - death spares no one. It begs the question - if a violent moment is heard but not seen, did it happen?