Blogorium Review: La Haine

Watching La Haine (Hate) this week was a rather fascinating experience. On the one hand, I find the film itself compelling and at all times a gripping experience. On the other hand, I have to wonder: what happened to the Mathieu Kassovitz that directed this film? Where did he go, because the movies he's making now are at best pale imitations of the talented filmmaker he once was.

But first, La Haine itself; a movie I can envision myself watching again soon. The film itself is a sort of Do the Right Thing for French ghetto life. The film begins with a riot and over the next day, simmering in the background, is the threat of reprisal from any direction: the police, the underprivileged kids, or the skinheads. Kassovitz follows three young men throughout the movie, Vinz (Vincent Cassel) a French-Jewish kid obsessed with boosting his "cred", Hubert (Hubert Kounde) a French-African boxer who lost everything during the riot, and Said (Said Taghmaoui) a French-Arab who bears most of the police scrutiny. Their friend Abdel ends up in a coma after the riot and with nothing to do but stew about it, Vinz, Hubert and Said are headed down a dark path.

Before they get there, Kassovitz has a number of diversions to take them on, the most interesting of which is their night trapped in Paris (ala After Hours) which at least gets them out of the post-riot tension. La Haine leads you to think it's headed in one direction and then suddenly makes not one but two suprise turns near the end. To say much more would spoil the film.

To me, it was interesting the way that La Haine plays out the influence of American popular culture on these guys. In addition to direct references to Taxi Driver and Scarface, the film is littered with songs from Isaac Hayes, The Beastie Boys, Bob Marley, and an interesting take on "Fuck Tha Police." Posters and product placement abound; for example, Vinz spends the entire film wearing an Nike emblazoned jacket and Hubert wears Everlast training gear. Candid Camera is the centerpiece of a story and another conversation asks "who's more badass: Wile E. Coyote or the Road Runner?"

It's curious that Americans tend to think of "foreign" films as one that eschews the ubiquitous nature of U.S. pop culture around the world, but Kassovitz embraces it as though nothing is (or should) be strange about it. For a young filmmaker (he made La Haine at age 28), he's in stunning command of the camera. La Haine alternates between long, documentary-like takes following characters around and highly stylized edits, sound bridges, and a very nice zoom-dolly. The main characters are introduced from behind and Kassovitz often shoots over their shoulders, giving audiences a "first person" feeling during the film, utilized to a similar effect in last year's The Wrestler. This is an assured filmmaker working with an excellent cast of professional and amateur actors on a high level.

So what the hell happened? If anything, you probably know Mathieu Kassovitz as the love interest in Amelie or possibly from Munich (he's also an actor and has a small role in La Haine as a skinhead), and the reason you might not know him as a director is that since La Haine he hasn't done much of note. I haven't seen Assassin(s), but I have seen The Crimson Rivers and chunks of Gothika and Babylon A.D., and they don't even hint at the talent Kassovitz displays in La Haine.

The Crimson Rivers is a strange case, as Kassovitz (working with Jean Reno and again with Cassel) expressly tried to make an "international" film. In trying to reach a market outside of France, the film is a thriller in the Seven mold but has really strange touches, like a fight Cassel gets into that's played out like a Tekken arcade game. The movie doesn't really work and is clearly dumber than it needs to be to interest "foreign" markets. I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of it, since I only found it on dvd via Netflix.

But Gothika and Babylon A.D. are just awful. Not simply because they're bad movies, but it feels like Kassovitz is phoning in the directing, even if Babylon was a studio-mandated hatchet job. I really don't understand how you could watch La Haine and any of the movies he made afterward and think the same guy directed them. It's a shame because I first heard of him through Amelie and then was informed of his talents as a director. While I can see how you could say that from this film, his later work leaves me scratching my head. It's a pity too, because he could be doing so much more.