After watching this film I reflected back on a whole host of films I've seen produced by Warner Brothers back in the Forties and Fifties, having to do with the subject of poverty and how that can lead to crime and lost lives. In a lot of cases, civic and moral dilemmas could often be resolved with right winning out over wrong in the end. In today's world, 'right' often comes up empty handed, and often there's a fine line between differentiating the good from the bad. In many cases, moral equivalency enters the picture, and we're left to distinguish between bad and less bad. It doesn't make for a hopeful situation.
That's the sort of picture "La Haine" is. Translated, it means 'Hate', and that emotion is palpable throughout the story of three young men with no direction, no job, and nothing to do with themselves except kill time by hanging around in one section of the city or another. Being a French film, the city in this case is Paris, but not the Paris one sees in travel brochures. This story is set in an area of depressing housing projects where the chances of upward mobility doesn't exist, exacerbated by tensions between the police and a diverse population trying to make ends meet.
The film is book-ended by an idea submitted as a conversation about a person falling from a high rise window. All the way down, the soon to be deceased person maintains a momentary positive attitude by repeating to himself, 'so far so good', with a corollary offered by the listener that 'it's not how you fall that matters, it's how you land'. This would appear to be good advice for the three principal characters, Said, Vinz and Hubert if they only had the temperament to look at their lives objectively and realize that no one was going to come to their rescue as victims of the projects. That they would have to do for themselves. But with those whose inner rage has ratcheted up to a boiling point, an inevitable hard landing is virtually assured.
I thought this was a good film for what it was, even though it doesn't try to provide any answers. The answers, as most rational people know, lie within one's self, and there are many real life examples one can point to of people digging themselves out of a hole to become worthwhile and productive citizens. Unfortunately, many never figure it out, and 'so far, so good' almost never lasts.
That's the sort of picture "La Haine" is. Translated, it means 'Hate', and that emotion is palpable throughout the story of three young men with no direction, no job, and nothing to do with themselves except kill time by hanging around in one section of the city or another. Being a French film, the city in this case is Paris, but not the Paris one sees in travel brochures. This story is set in an area of depressing housing projects where the chances of upward mobility doesn't exist, exacerbated by tensions between the police and a diverse population trying to make ends meet.
The film is book-ended by an idea submitted as a conversation about a person falling from a high rise window. All the way down, the soon to be deceased person maintains a momentary positive attitude by repeating to himself, 'so far so good', with a corollary offered by the listener that 'it's not how you fall that matters, it's how you land'. This would appear to be good advice for the three principal characters, Said, Vinz and Hubert if they only had the temperament to look at their lives objectively and realize that no one was going to come to their rescue as victims of the projects. That they would have to do for themselves. But with those whose inner rage has ratcheted up to a boiling point, an inevitable hard landing is virtually assured.
I thought this was a good film for what it was, even though it doesn't try to provide any answers. The answers, as most rational people know, lie within one's self, and there are many real life examples one can point to of people digging themselves out of a hole to become worthwhile and productive citizens. Unfortunately, many never figure it out, and 'so far, so good' almost never lasts.