Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1315 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-09-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, PAL, Special Edition
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
La Haine is an angry, anti-authoritarian French film that concerns three young guys (a Jew, an Arab, a black) who decide to take on the police after a friend is brutally beaten. There isn't much going on in this black and white drama beyond its violence (which can be pretty hard to watch, such as an interrogation scene that incorporates torture) and gritty observations of wayward youths hanging out on the fringes of Paris. Certainly, there isn't much in the way of insight, and director Mathieu Kassovitz seems to have absorbed more of the excesses of America's independent film scene, especially Spike Lee at his most indulgent, than its blessings. But if it's edge and rawness you want, this has it--with subtitles. --Tom Keogh

Special Features
Digitally Remastered
New Subtitles
Audio Commentary from Director Mathieu Kassovitz
Original colour versions of selected scenes
Behind the Scenes Footage
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Special 10th Anniversary Edition

Synopsis
Shot in black and white cinema verite style, this film follows a day in the life of three aimless, violence-prone, ethnically-diverse young men who hail from the same decaying housing project in Paris. Vinz, who is Jewish, is the angriest and the least intelligent of the three. North African Said is calmer, but is the most despairing about his future. Hubert is Black, and the most mature, channeling his rage through boxing. Although the trio seethes with fury over the arrest and senseless beating of an Arab friend, each manages to keep the other in check. But that changes after Vinz finds a loaded gun--and the trio becomes entangled with the police, and later a group of skinheads. Mathieu Kassovitz won the Best Director prize for LA HAINE at the Cannes Film Festival.

Customer Reviews

Improved translation to DVD
Released in 1995, 'La Haine' (hate) was an immediate box-office success in France, and achieved critical acclaim winning the Best Director Award at Cannes for Mathieu Kassovitz, then in his late twenties. Kassovitz comes from a family of film makers, and had already established himself as both a promising actor and director.

The film captures the rigid emptiness of life in a sprawling concrete banlieu (housing scheme) on the outskirts of Paris, an environment peopled by those who lack the financial or social clout to live somewhere better. These are Eastern Bloc tenements, characterless boxes in which society's detritus can be stacked, abandoned, and - hopefully - forgotten about.

The film focuses on three lads - somewhat stereotypically a Jew, a North African, and a black African. Life in the banlieu is supposed to be a tale of sanitised boredom - surely the immigrant population should be grateful for admission to the cultural greatness of France and its capital? Only the black youth attempts to make something of it - he has struggled to build a gym and to literally fight his way out of poverty by boxing. The North African youth is an incorrigible thief and poseur. The Jewish lad, meanwhile, poses in front of the mirror, aping De Niro's taxi-driver and playing the hard man.

But the world of the banlieu has imploded in urban riot - a participant sport in which local youths can engage and enrage the CRS, the French riot police, in a game of street chess, complete with petrol bombs and baton rounds. It is, of course, an entertaining spectator sport for the film crews and media. For the rioters, their fifteen minutes of fame come courtesy of news broadcasts.

The Jewish boy finds a handgun, dropped by one of the riot police. Now he can finally imitate De Niro. He has power, he has status, because he has a gun. All he needs now is a pretext to use it, something to legitimise the pulling of the trigger.

Shot in black and white, 'La Haine' is a tale of escalating tension, a deconstruction of the alienation experienced by young men who perceive mainstream society as a closed door and who can conceive of no future for themselves. Its institutions, even the family, have no hold on them. The presence of the police within the banlieu seems an invasion of what little space they call their own - they have their own values, their own morality. They are at the bottom of the ladder: the riot police seem to be there simply to remind them that they can be squashed at will.

The film achieves a documentary quality - it is reminiscent of 'The Battle for Algiers', it reconstructs the banlieu as a sort of casbah, complete with rooftop living. Rioting in France, of course, has a slightly different context from rioting in Britain. Street riots are historically associated with revolution. But the riots, here, are devoid of any overt, focused political cause or objectivity. They are simply oppositional. You almost sense that the CRS like to have a more than virtual reality training suite like this - whenever they want to practice their riot duties, they simply drive in and give the locals a bit of a stir.

It's the sheer arrogance of both sides which comes across. Their actions are amoral and pointless ... other than in fighting an opponent. The youths are never going to win, but neither are the police. Properly orchestrated, it could become a tourist attraction - "Hey, let's go to Paris, watch a riot!" Who would want to go to Eurodisney when they could have this?

Kassovitz extends a sympathetic hand to the young men. The banlieus were synonymous with social exclusion and had become a focus of French populist and often racist politics since the 1970's - decaying, impoverished, rife with crime and drugs, and damned with indelible social stigma ... try getting a job when you have to declare your postcode and admit where you live! The residents were socially, economically, culturally, and politically excluded from ... if not actively rejected by mainstream French society.

Originally inspired by the shooting of 16-year old black youth in 1993 (it attracted little or no media attention at the time), Kassovitz was influenced by a number of directors (Spike Lee is often cited, but Kurosawa was an influence, and there is a whole dynamic of French films which feature disaffected youth and which employ a drama-documentary approach and social realist techniques). It's an extraordinarily impressive and powerful piece of cinema, its impact made all the greater by its low budget, its lack of star names, and indeed, by its moral ambiguity.

The tension builds almost unbearably to an inevitable conclusion in what is, above all, a superb piece of filmmaking. The DVD, however, let Kassovitz down. In the original release, the sub-titles are almost indecipherable - they are lost against the black and white of the film, and translate the French into Americanisms which lose much of the force of the language. The special edition resolves this, making the action much easier to follow - so go for that. 'La Haine' is already a classic piece of French - and European - cinema, and is a must watch for any true film fan.

the view from a French person
Hi, Yes, i'm French and saw La haine when it was out at the cinema. I loved it but everybody didn't thought the same (kind of the same feeling as for marmite for UK people). It's not easy to watch, there is a lot of French-city-talking that can't be properly translated and yes, as you've understood from other reviews, it's in B&W. If you feel responsible enough to buy it thengood for you. if, you manage to watch it until the end I'm sure you will not say the usual "well, it was OK but stalone would have been good in the middle"... No, it's really a very very good film. It will explain you exactly what's going on in french suburbs of Paris. Don't be afraid to go to France though as you will luckily not see that. it's iden from tourists.
On the film direction : nothing to say about the actors. they are just fantastic and no-one would have been better than them. M kassovitz is so good as a film director (as well as actor, see Amelie). He's got a real knowledge of the photography as well. The end is completely unexpected but better than what you saw in the sixth sense.... have a good film.
Oh! I forgot, o buy it, it's certainly worth having it in your collection of DVDs.

the greatest film ever produced - no cliche
La Haine is an absolute cinematic masterpiece not just for its social commentary but how it infuses the personal into the public and the profound understanding of the characters and the realities that they face. It shows how feelings of hatred between friends are overcome by the deepest love in ways that a romantic fiction could only scratch the surface.

It is a story based on a day in the lives of three close friends from France's equivalent of council estates in the aftermath of heavy rioting in their neighbourhood. The film looks at the reactions of the three individuals to the disturbances and how these attitudes change as the events of the day cause the friends to gain a deeper understanding of each other. Although the plot of the film doesn't exclusively centre on this it becomes central in the final tragedy. Kassovitz' ability to draw the viewer into identifying with the three characters may mean that this review is of the objective persuasion but isn't that the beauty of cinema?

The only complaint i would have would be with the absolute mess-up that has been created with the "improved" translation. The original English subtitles were in cockney English and this dialect probably has the closest relevance to the context of the film that can be achieved within the English language. The American English translation on this latest edition throws the film halfway across the globe and fills it with blatant inaccuracies.

Although this edition is full of such instances examples can be seen when the trio are thrown out of the art gallery and when the door has been closed the gallery owner laments "troubled youth" what he actually said was "kids from the suburbs" which has a completely different meaning as it is intended as an example of the prejudices they regularly run into. Also when Hubert and Said are at the bottom of an escalator in the early hours of the morning a reference to people who vote La Pen is changed to "right" voters which again seriously alters its meaning.

It can only be imagined that these changes where made to sell the film to an American audience. A great folly as it is well known Americans have no interest in European cinema and the few that do would surely have the intelligence to understand a foreign dialect. I would therefore advice everyone to buy a copy of the old edition second hand if your French isn't great. But if that isn't possible just bear with the cringing awfulness of the ridiculous scribbles that appear at the bottom of the screen and just watch this film. (it may even convince you to learn French just to better appreciate it - its that good)