Hate our way… La Haine (1995), BFI re-release, in cinemas now.

“How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land!”

 

There’s a tendency to doubt any human experience beyond our own with denial a most compelling response to grief, day after day it’s not just Laurence Fox who thinks all lives are equally threatened or equally free but it’s simply not true either empirically or emotionally.

 

I remember the riots that formed the basis of Mathieu Kassovitz’s story and watching this visceral film a quarter of a century later is a sobering experience as the Western World undergoes another alarming rise in civil disobedience in response to police brutality. These things are never simple as indeed Kassovitz makes totally clear, but it is the sheer mind-numbing predictability of events repeating themselves that hits you the hardest.

 

As one of the main characters says, "la haine attire la haine!", “hate breeds hate!” and yet we carry on, societies in free fall, telling ourselves that, from moment to moment, “... so far so good... so far so good…” yet the hard impact is ever approaching.

 

Kassovitz was inspired by the death of Malik Oussekine, a student who died after being badly beaten by the riot police after a mass demonstration in 1986 as well as that of a young Zairian, Makome M’Bowole, who was killed when a gun went off at point blank range while in police custody and handcuffed to a radiator in 1993. Both are referred to in the opening montage, now just two victims in the endless human chain of fear and disregard; you don’t have to have a bleeding heart to despair at the sheer inefficiency of hate, there is simply no utility.

Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui and Vincent Cassel

Kassovitz is described by Jodie Foster in her interview on the Criterion Edition as a man from the streets who was also very well educated and in his search for authenticity he filmed in the Parisian “projects” of Chanteloup-les-Vignes where the actors and production team, moved for the filming three months prior to the start of the shoot.

 

The three leads are featured in virtually every scene and all leave their mark, Hubert Koundé as Hubert has not only uncanny grace and power but also, as Foster says, a childlike quality that gives his character a vulnerability despite of his intelligence and apparent purpose. Hubert runs a small gym and boxes, peddling dope to cover his costs – something so commonplace many of us will have seen it at school (most Tory MPs aside).

 

Saïd Taghmaoui’s Saïd appears to be the youngest and is the joker in the pack, of North African descent and therefore a more significant part of French imperialistic history than the others. He’s easy going, less aggressive and the most neurotypical.

 

Hubert Koundé

Vincent Cassel is, of course extraordinary, as the hyper Vinz – of Jewish heritage - attention deficit, ultra-energised and with testosterone levels cancelling out reason. He mimics Robert de Niro’s Travis Bickel in the bathroom, “…you looking at me?! Tu me regardes?!” fierce but still boyish. He wants to kill a cop if their friend dies in police custody but we’re not sure even he’s sure he’ll do it even though the momentum of the film is such the sense of strictly limited mortality is ever present.

 

The film begins with footage of actual riots before revealing that the lads’ friend, Abdel Ichacha, has been hospitalized after taking part. The locals attack the police station in retaliation and this leads to a riot during which a police officer loses his revolver… Vinz, finding the weapon, finally has some power in a life curtailed by economic and social circumstance, but how will he use it.

 

The story follows the three for the day after the riot as their normal monotony is broken by thoughts of revenge and the constant presence of a police force intent on not losing control of the situation. There are community liaison officers amongst the police but more forceful elements are now at play and some of the policing is shockingly aggressive; one painful scene has two Parisian policemen humiliate and torture two of the boys as another watches in disgust.

Saïd Taghmaoui

This is one of those moments when I doubted the narrative – I am a policeman’s son after all – but then I read about the death of Makome M’Bowole… La Haine forces these issues and the responsible thing is to educate yourself and not ignore patterns of brutality or even dismiss them as the problem of certain countries. In my father’s time parts of Liverpool were so rough that the bobbies patrolled in groups of three, they weren’t armed with anything other than truncheons and, by and large, they came from the same working-class culture as those they policed. Now, societies are far more diverse and structurally broken… France, Britain and the US are all, to varying degrees, in decline economically, politically and morally.

 

Pierre Aïm’s cinematography pulls the viewer into this grim world, with exceptional mobility, extended takes and the choice of black and white stripping away the artifice of cinema and pushing you face to face with the main characters as they travel from the projects into Paris for the first time, in search of money and chance. There are superb cameos on their journey, with François Levantal as Astérix, a coke fiend who supposedly owes Saïd money and who plays Russian roulette with Vinz’s gun – this is real madness boys, only he’s palmed the bullets… Then there’s the drunk (Vincent Lindon) who offers to drive the car they steal when they realise that none of them can drive and the old man who emerges from the toilet they’re in to casually relate how his friend died of exposure after failing to re-board the train taking them to the gulag; life can be lost in such mundane ways.

 

Marooned in Paris after midnight, the boys encounter a group of skinheads and only Vinz’s gun saves them from a beating, they capture one of the skins (Mathieu Kassovitz) and Hubert tries to goad Vinz into showing that he can kill someone he hates. It feels like a pivotal moment but then the three have still to return to the projects…

La Haine still punches above its weight and is recommended for old Harrovians and state school oiks alike. It has its message but it is also great cinema and needs to be seen on the big screen.

 

It’s now on general release and at the re-opened BFI over the rest of September, details on the BFI website here.