Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui star in La Haine

On a cloudy Thursday, April 26 2012, Multi-Arts TRaC piled into the Sony Wonder Lab to view the 1995 French film “La Haine,”  directed by Matthieu Kassovitz. The title of this movie translates to “The Hate,” and this movie clearly displayed this message. This story is centered on three friends, Vince, Said, and Hubert, who live the street gang life with trouble always attracting them. The group travels around France collecting money, chasing down the police and running away from them, getting beat, arguing over little things, and just not giving a care in the world about anything they did or didn’t do. As the movie goes on, you grow attached to these characters and although they live in such similar settings, you can see that each of them is different. Vince likes to act tough all the time, Said is very immature, and Hubert wants to be the responsible one and escape the ghetto setting. You grow attached to the characters and follow their tragic lives, which they have little hope in escaping. Through about a 36 hour time lapse, they escape the police and defy the rules to make a point within the community. One of the points they want to make is mistreatment by the police.

However, after beginning to accept the characters, the ending arrives and then BOOM. Silence. The ending of the movie just leaves you speechless, literally. It came so fast and although I might have expected it, I would have never thought that the idea would have been expressed in such a way that it made a point about the risks of being a “tough guy” on the streets without being so cliché. No words escaped my mouth as the credits started rolling. The whole room was silent. And we stayed silent for a good few minutes.

Watch the trailer of “La Haine”