Customer Reviews

La Haine ( Hate ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]

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I have yet to see the DVD of La Haine. This review is of the VHS version:

Hate (La Haine) is a remarkable film. It follows three friends of different ethnicity through 24 hours in and around Paris. The film begins the day after a riot has struck the slums just outside of Paris. The three characters are Jewish, Arabic, and Black, and are all good friends despite the differences that divide them. This is an excellant character study. The film focuses less on the violence of the slum, but instead focuses on the mentallity of the three young men. After their good friend was brtually beaten by the police, the Jewish one vows that he will kill a police officer if the man dies. This vow haunts the entire film, and although it is almost a plot device, it is soon realised that it is so much more; its a character trait that can be respected once we understand these three men more. Why is one of them so much more prone to a promise of violence than the other two? Does their race/ethnicity matter in the ghetto when they're all as poor as each other? Why do the police harrass them all the time? These are some of the questions that are brought up throughout the film. To know and understand these three chracters is to know the answers. The plot is almost unnecessary in a film like La Haine. This is a chracter study. True, what happened the night before is very important to the story, but only if it properlly involves these three men, which it does quite well. Assuming the subtitles are done properly, the the dialogue is great, and the whole film is shot with a documentary feel. The whole film feels real, and we can relate to the characters because of how real they are. When I first saw this film, it blew me away. I've yet to see its DVD release, but once I find it I will get it. This is top-notch film making, and very good screenwriting.

In some ways, I can see this is a French version of Spike Lee's masterpiece "Do The Right Thing" in 1989. Its about a lower-class neighborhood, and its residence, and how they live their lives. A very important, and daring film. It shows, to Americans at least, that poverty is poverty, and racism is racims, no matter what part of the world its in. This is a great film, and very important.

Kassovitz won the Cannes Film Festival in 1995 with this bitter black & white drama about a disillusioned urban youth where the racial problems, the unemployment and the overpopulation combine to give a remarkable and brutal portrait of a painful reality set in a Paris suburb.

A true cinema verité, so in vogue in Europe, first through the Italian Neo Realism, then reinserted in The French New wave and later redefined in the Nineties thanks to Lars von Triers (Zentropa), Patrice Laconte (Monsieur Hire) and Alvaro de la Iglesia (La comunidad) among the most representative.

La Haine is a subtitled, fantastic, well shot, Black & White French film about how France gives lip service to diversity. The day I write this it is the 11th day of rioting in Paris suburbs, November, 2005. La Haine has come to life 10 years later. In comparison to American cinema, this is the disaster movie that never happened; i.e. "Over the Edge", "Red Dawn", "Escape From New York". The difference between the US & France was the US realized the direction things were going and did something about it. France didn't and now it burns.

La Haine will illustrate reality- the hate, the racism, the poverty in harsh terms.

DO NOT SHOW THIS MOVIE TO YOUNG CHILDREN!!! Issues are too complex.