La Haine

 

Please note the purpose of this blog is to discuss established classics that I've never seen. As such, the following is laden with spoilers.

Why So Long?

It's funny, well maybe not funny. After watching this I was catching up with a friend via text and mentioned I'd finally watched it. He replied to say that he'd also just watched it that weekend, despite having the DVD for some twenty years. I'd lived with him for about three of those years and also managed to not put it on until now. Sometimes you just take your time in getting round to things.

And? 

So, I'll begin by advising that if you haven't watched La Haine yet, maybe try not to watch it whilst enjoying a cheese board. This beast infects your psyche on its own merits, you don't need to help it out. Its was two or three nights at least before my dreams stopped looking like they'd been directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. 

In the intervening twenty-five years, Kassovitz has come to view the film as a ball and chain of sorts. He wouldn't be the first artist to find themselves defined by early, powerful work but it must be an odd sensation, to put it politely. Something that at one point you must have loved with a passion, has now become an indelicately positioned boil that you'll never be able to lance. The man even went as far as starring as the love interest in Amelie, as close to an anti-La Haine as I can imagine and still this is very much the film he'll be remembered for.

That however has as much to do with La Haine's continuing relevance as it does with anything Kassovitz did. Like all films from different eras, there are things that age La Haine but here these items only reinforce its message rather than substract or distract from it. One can't imagine La Haine being remade today, or updated with the leading trio remaining as multi-racial. For one thing, there is no hint of radical-Islam within the banlieu in which the film is set, something we know from tragic current events, is very much the case now. In the intervening years, the divisions within France that led to the riots with which this film begins, have, if anything, only deepened. Not that France is alone in that amongst the nations of western Europe.

The divisions focused on here are instead, those of class. Our three anti-heroes are jobless, with no prospects and not much to do with their day. Like all who riot on their own doorsteps, they do so because on some level they know that what is there isn't really theirs. The murals of Proust and Hugo, occasionally glimpsed in the background, floating alien heads with no relevance to the lives of the people they look down on. Instead one sees them almost as a cultural "big brother" character, there to reinforce the very-real police who seek to shutdown and oppress.

Finally, one cannot talk about this film without at least giving some verbal acknowledgement to Vincent Cassel. Unquestionably an odd looking soul, a man who's very charisma seems to find it cramped within the confines of his body. Even here, still very much in youth and at the commencement of his career one can see the star he would become. A character actor that also has the qualities of a true leading man, like a French Warren Beatty.

 

"Woah, what a speech! Half Moses, half Mickey Mouse"

 

 

 

There's an elite group of films that tower over the history of cinema. Some of them are subjective but by and large their titles are agreed on, their merit and position at the top of totem demanded by their unrelenting quality. Films that somehow transcend hype; despite repeatedly being told just how good they are, when you get round to watching them, they really are that good. The Godfather and Casablanca are two obvious examples, I'd argue we can add La Haine to that group.

 

Will You Be Watching It Again? 

Unquestionably, a film this good is destined to always be good. My relationship with it and interpretation of it will change, shaped by my ages and whatever the current events are when I stick it on. It's quality will always remain unchanged.

Has Any Light Been Shone on Some Heretofore Unknown Bit of Pop Culture?

Not really, one can see its influence on subsequent European cinema, but its not like this thing is likely to get called out in The Simpsons is it?