La Haine

I didn’t expect to enjoy this film as much as I did. Upon hearing that it was low-budget , I anticipated a poorly-produced, badly-acted movie with relatively unskilled-actors vocalizing a pitifully-worded script. What I witnessed, however, was everything of the contrary. It looked both professional and home-made, which gave to it an authentic and original feel that I cannot truthfully proclaim I’ve seen in many films I’ve watched. I especially appreciated the various filming techniques that were utilized by the director, like the close-up shots to capture their strong, albeit unspoken sentiments, or the wide shots that were aimed at capturing the extent to which their day-to-day existences were plagued by poverty, crime, and prejudice. Something that I also found very interesting was the constant juxtaposition of the rich and the poor, as throughout the development of the movie, there was an overwhelming feeling that pointed towards things being out of place; of not belonging. For instance, we can see the Eiffel tower, a blatant symbol of wealth and prosperity, constantly lurking over the dirty, run-down ghettos of Paris, and this illusion is likewise created when the main characters enter the art exhibition, only to be looked down upon by everyone there. Moreover, I think that my favorite element of the production of this film was the constant ticking of time. It had us anticipating something, although we were unaware of what that something might possibly entail, which ultimately led to two of the three main characters being murdered, and no problems getting fixed in the process. This was an incredibly powerful shock factor, because as viewers, we expect for movies to end happily, or in the least, in a better state than where they had initially began. It was because of this brutal ending scene, however, that the viewers are made fully able to grasp the state of the society in which the characters unfortunately lived, proving that the creators were successful in transmitting the underlying themes of inequality and hardship to the viewers in an unquestionably impactful way.