La Haine [Hate] (FRANCE. 1995)

“Have you heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good... so far so good... so far so good. How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land.”

Mathieu Kassovitz (Before he made a million girls swoon with his cutesy pie act as the photo-booth guy in Amelie) directs and writes this hard edge tale of rebels with only a vague cause stuck in the miserable French Slums (Banlieu) for the rest of their lives. During a night of riots and looting, one of their own is shot and sent to a hospital he’s declared in ‘critical condition’. Vincent Cassel stars as Vinz, the center of the story, an angry young white man with no direction and zero idea where he’s supposed to head in life. He finds a police issue .45 revolver during the riot and he makes himself a promise: If their friend dies in the hospital, he’s going to plug a cop. ‘One for one’ he says ‘It’s only fair.’ His older and (slightly) more aware black friend Hubert thinks he’s crazy. The third cog in their wheel, an Iranian named Said, just wants to recuperate the money a drug-dealer owes him. None of them care about the color of their skin, even if the police and the public think differently. They don’t have anything better to do one day, so they all head down to Paris to get Said’s money, unprepared for what the city of the rich was going to spring on them.

The art of fabricating a film that is engaging and plot less is a rare one. Director Kassovitz tackles the challenge by injecting every scene with an almost distracting amount of American inspired cinematic trickery. He composes shots in such a painterly fashion that it almost distanced me from the street-tough events playing out in front of my eyes. It’s a double edged trick, because following a move of cinematic virtuoso I was smacked upside the head with harsh reality. The stark black and white presentation helps to add a grittier feel, even when the film is filled with elegant steady-cam camera moves. As previously noted, there are only the bare wisps of a forward moving narrative here, but contrary to what you’d believe, that works completely in the film’s favor. These kids (Fantastically performed by the trio, who all went to bigger and better things) have no real direction so they just wander. They joke, they make trouble, and they run into cops. It’s a vicious cycle that Hubert wants to escape, Vinz wants to break and Said just wants to live in. There’s a lot these characters are going to learn, good and bad, and I was there with them even if like these characters all the time: They where childish, impulsive and short tempered. It’s a testament to the strong performances and nuanced writing that I could relate to them in an instinctively human way. It’s that relation that makes the brutal (and unavoidable) ending that much harder to stomach. La Haine will stay with you for a long time after the end credits (which are music less) roll on. Life is hard, but we can make our own choices, even if we can’t always decide the outcome.

DVD:

Criterion hits it out of the park once again. A fantastic looking picture and sound mix are backed up with a surprisingly vocal and clear sounding commentary track from Director Mathieu Kassovits. The second disc boasts a 90 minute documentary on the making of the film, some deleted scenes (Which show that the film was originally shot on color stock) and a documentary about the French Slums. It’s an all around perfect package for a film that deserves it.