La Haine

This past week we watched a movie in French class titled "La Haine" meaning the hate, literally. The film focused on conflict between les HLMs, or moderated housing units, like the projects in America, and the police, which of course represented the rest of society. The pretext of the film is that one young man from the projects is severely beaten by the police, and in retaliation the projects riot out of control, burning down schools and blowing up cars and assaulting police stations.

The film then focuses on three young men, one an African boxer who lost his gym in the riots and whose brother is in jail, another an Arab who wants his hair cut, and the last a Jew who thinks he has something to prove. All three sell drugs for a living. La Haine chronicles one day in their lives, the day after the riots take place.

By violent demonstration and dramatic symbolism, along with an allegory by an old man in a public lavatory, the film implies several things about violence. One of the obvious implications is that violence begets violence, which is in fact stated by Hubert, the African, at one point in the film. Another is that unless you let go of your pride you will never be saved. This comes from the allegory of the old man in the lavatory, who tells the story of a man attempting to get on a train in the Russian winter who had his pants down and would not let them fall in order to grasp the hand of his potential savior. Combining these two ideas, one must conclude that pride causes violence and death.

I thought this an interesting conclusion to arrive at, as a lot of media created by those coming from the lower socio-economic classes tend to emphasize pride and knowing where you are from, and the film points out that this mentality only restricts you from being saved.