224. La Haine

Song - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (Edith Piaf)

Movie: La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

At the introduction of our Media Studies screening of La Haine, we were told to pay special attention to the scene where a DJ mixes a French rap telling us to 'Fuck the Police' over Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. The idea being that the French banlieu is taking over French mainstream culture and society. That is a fair interpretation, and I am sure is part of the intent behind the remix, but that's not the main reason why the scene works. As the DJ blasts his song from his top floor appartment the camera floats through the neighborhood, past all the council flats and playgrounds filled with people enjoying the unusual sound created by mixing Piaf's soft voice with the rap's aggresiveness. It's a celebration of the culture that binds this community, and it is directly followed by a scene in which Vinz (Vincent Cassel) is confused by a cow passing by in the street. The sight of the cow is funny, as is Vinz' bewildered look, but there is also a surreal feeling to the scene. We only see the cow from Vinz' point of view, and it may well only exist in his mind. These two scenes are a good summary of why this film works. It is genuinely interested in the lives and minds of the dissafected youths it depicts, rather than in looking from afar and lamenting the state of affairs. It's no surprise that it has a less nuanced view of journalists and news producers than of cops. 

It follows through on its belief that the lives of these people are interesting, by depicting them in an interesting way. It's of course shot in black and white, and plays around with jump cuts and all kinds of other strange visual and and aural effects during scene transitions. There are moments of magical realism, such as the scene where one of the characters clicks his fingers and turns off the light of the Eiffel Tower. It has unusal shot compositions; often we'll see an extreme close-up in half a frame, with the other half being occupied by some action in the background. As Vinz, Hubert (Hubert Kounde) and Said (Said Taghmaoui) try to make sense of their community and their lives after a day of deadly riots, they are acting cool, talking shit and making shooting gestures at the camera, inviting the audience to follow their example. They meet violent cops in police custody, an old, strange Russian raconteur in a public toilet, and a guy named Asterix (subtitled as Snoopy for some reason), swinging around with nunchakus in his underwear in a a fancy Paris apartment, in a wonderfully absurd detour that plays as it could have inspired the 'Sister Christian' scene in Boogie Nights. 

Not everything in the film works, but it's always entertaining. It has swagger, sightly obnoxious swagger even. That's good! The Dutch director Sam de Jong, who made Prins, a film about Dutch multicultural street youths that's much more optimistic than La Haine, said that when shooting the film he always thought that it should be enjoyed by the milieu and the characters it depicts. I really like this idea, and it definitely applies to La Haine. The characters we see in this film would absolutely love the shit out of it. It's not just about them, but it's also for them. It's an indictment of French (film) culture that since La Haine it has, to my knowledge, barely produced any high profile movies about the banlieus/the disenchanted multicultural French youth that actually follow the approach of Kassovitz here. The brilliant Nocturama may be the most relevant exception.