La haine (Hate)
The Criterion Collection
When he was just twenty-nine years old, Mathieu Kassovitz took the international film world by storm with La haine (Hate), a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically in the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until they reach a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.
Member Reviews
Relevent today too! - Mano
I thought initially how can this be relevent today? We have come a long way from 1996. North America does not have council flats like France or the UK.
But watching some of the riots here, especially G 20 summit and such, one need not wonder if this movie strikes a universal chord or not. It certainly does.
Well acted well photographed and well written.
Sad to watch the wanton damage done by the kids. But I guess one can "see" this being a product of social decay and the two streams ot merging at all. Again very similar to what one sees in here. No connection between wall street and the main street.
I recommend this for sociologically conscious movie goers.A Stunning Warning - CharleyJames
Hate is an in-your-face shriek against racism, apathy and police autocracy.
It follows a trio of disaffected homeboys – Vinz, Hubert and Said – the day after their buddy Abdel has been hospitalized because of a police beating.
Vinz is a walking time bomb who dreams of “smoking” a cop and look in his mirror to pretend he's the wannabe assassin in Taxi Driver. Said is an Arab who plays tagalong and Hubert is an African boxer who tries in vain to temper Vinz's wild outbursts.
Their world on the fringes of Paris is a bleak minefield of potential tragedy. Deprived of work, respect and a healthy community, they form an alternative family bonded by free-floating rage. In one scene, Said and Hubert get picked up by a cop who stuffs them into an interrogation room mostly because he wants to show the art of humiliation and intimidation to his rookie partner.
Earlier, when the boys visit their injured friend at the hospital, the cops bar them, saying, “We're here to protect you.” Replies Hubert, “But who's going to protect us from you?"
Unlike American ‘hood movies, which romanticize their gangsta protagonists at the same time as they deplore them, Hate has a plaintive, sympathetic chord that runs beneath the anger. It cuts deeper and shows us the foolishness of its characters as it mourns their inevitable tragedy.
One night, as the guys sit looking at the Eiffel Tower, which symbolizes all the prosperity, romance and comfort they can never experience, Hubert tells a story he heard from a rabbi, about a man who fell off a skyscraper.
“On the way down,” Hubert says, “he says to himself, ‘So far, so good.' Like us in the projects: So far, so good. But how will we land?"
Hate is an urgent alarm to France and the world. As long as we avoid facing up to the problems of race, corruption and economic division, we're bound for tragedy.
It's not how we fall, the film reminds us; it's how we land.Powerful and grim - kap0n3
This film is powerful and grim. Totally unforgettable is the last scene which at my first viewing time blew me away. It comes very suddenly and there are no warnings what will happen at the end of this film. The message is so important and these marks of the "apocalypse" can be found in our everyday life everywhere. The society is falling and it is "spinning" as the voice over says just before the end credits..The film brings into question such horrific facts as racism which should have passed away long times ago, but no. Racism is such a primitive, stupid and despisable cancer among people, that there is no hope of better future if individuals don't understand the real facts of life and right ways to live with each other. Hate feeds hate as the character Hubert says, and that is something that our stupid race has not learned.
Member Reviews
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Relevent today too! - Mano
I thought initially how can this be relevent today? We have come a long way from 1996. North America does not have council flats like France or the UK.
But watching some of the riots here, especially G 20 summit and such, one need not wonder if this movie ...A Stunning Warning - CharleyJames
Hate is an in-your-face shriek against racism, apathy and police autocracy.
It follows a trio of disaffected homeboys – Vinz, Hubert and Said – the day after their buddy Abdel has been hospitalized because of a police beating.
Vinz is a walking ...Powerful and grim - kap0n3
This film is powerful and grim. Totally unforgettable is the last scene which at my first viewing time blew me away. It comes very suddenly and there are no warnings what will happen at the end of this film. The message is so important and these marks of the ...