"Hate" is one of the two movies that have been recommended to me the most (the other, if you care, is Sansho the Bailiff). Criterion's recently release of it in region 1 finally allowed me to see it, and though it's well made and decently enough written, I can't say I'm a huge fan.
"Hate" is the French answer to Spike Lee, right down to the floaty camera and the constant emphasis on racial tension. It starts on a riot, then introduces three friends (one Arab, one Jew, and one black) the next day, then goes to a party where someone says, "Did you hear about the pig (cop) that lost his gun last night?", and from there the entire movie is spelled out to anyone familiar with this type of story.
This movie is a social commentary on racism, class warfare, and "hateful" mentality, and it doesn't add much new to the mix except a cow (symbol of the character's misdirection) and a joke/theme about a man falling several stories to his death. The rest of it--the strange old man with the anecdote in the bathroom, the tracing of the gun as it changes hands but persists in remaining with the friends, the music, and the drawing up of the characters--are all tropes of what is becoming something of a recognizable sub-sub-genre within the already known "Urban Drama" sub-genre. And, like all those other films, this film isn't really interested as much in providing answers or clues as to what to do about humanity's tendency to hate as it is more interested in waxing poetic over it.
Not to say it's that bad of a movie, and technically the world can use a thousand movies like it until people finally get the point. But really, for one like me pretty uninterested in the theme and more interested in the medium itself, this movie really doesn't have much more to offer.
--PolarisDiB
"Hate" is the French answer to Spike Lee, right down to the floaty camera and the constant emphasis on racial tension. It starts on a riot, then introduces three friends (one Arab, one Jew, and one black) the next day, then goes to a party where someone says, "Did you hear about the pig (cop) that lost his gun last night?", and from there the entire movie is spelled out to anyone familiar with this type of story.
This movie is a social commentary on racism, class warfare, and "hateful" mentality, and it doesn't add much new to the mix except a cow (symbol of the character's misdirection) and a joke/theme about a man falling several stories to his death. The rest of it--the strange old man with the anecdote in the bathroom, the tracing of the gun as it changes hands but persists in remaining with the friends, the music, and the drawing up of the characters--are all tropes of what is becoming something of a recognizable sub-sub-genre within the already known "Urban Drama" sub-genre. And, like all those other films, this film isn't really interested as much in providing answers or clues as to what to do about humanity's tendency to hate as it is more interested in waxing poetic over it.
Not to say it's that bad of a movie, and technically the world can use a thousand movies like it until people finally get the point. But really, for one like me pretty uninterested in the theme and more interested in the medium itself, this movie really doesn't have much more to offer.
--PolarisDiB