This notion of inevitability and fate has its roots in hamartia, an Aristotelian term traditionally referring to the fatal flaw of a protagonist that leads to their downfall. However, the Oxford Companion to Theater Performance also states that “The traditional debate about hamartia as moral flaw or intellectual error makes it an attribute of character, but it is equally possible to see it as part of the plot, an action rather than a character flaw” (Vince). So, the hamartia that led to Vinz’s death could have sprung from within him—his pride, his anger, or his aggression—but it could have equally been the result of his environment and the greater “plot” of society rather than the flaw of the individual. To some, Kassovitz included, this latter interpretation is more logical. Vinz’s death was too predictable, too sadly familiar, for the hamartia to lie solely within this individual. This particular hamartia, then, must be the result of a greater system at play. The aim of Kassovitz’s film, then, is to reveal the larger cultural framework that allows such a cycle to perpetuate.
The origin of the particular framework at the core of the violence depicted in La Haine can be traced back to the late sixteenth century, during the colonial era. Political scientist Erik Bleich explores this period and its aftermath in his journal article “The Legacies of History? Colonization and Immigrant Integration in Britain and France.” Like other imperial empires, Bleich argues, France “established a host of administrative institutions and enacted a wide range of policies to facilitate rule beyond their border” (Bleich 171). Their span of control was vast, but it did not last. After World War II, citizens of former colonies were granted French citizenship as a part of the treaty agreements, and France experienced an influx of migrants. The French government was consequently tasked with creating postcolonial integration policies that were tainted with the remnants of imperialist colonial attitudes. France’s integration model is assimilationist, meaning the French government aims to turn immigrants into bona fide French “citoyens”—a notion of integrated citizenship first outlined during the French Revolution— rather than acknowledge their respective socio-cultural practices (172). Bleich further observes that the French government was so adamant in its resistance to multiculturalism that “Until 1981, France even restricted the rights of migrants to organize collectively, hindering ethnic identities and actions” (178). In turn, Bleich points out that “The government’s recent banning of Islamic headscarves in public schools appears to be further evidence of a widespread preference for assimilation over multicultural recognition of ethnic differences” (178). This suppression of “ethnic identities and actions” is demonstrably unrealistic: no one can merely cast away their heritage and cultural values and adopt new beliefs on a whim. And, for better or for worse, many immigrants, particularly after World War II, did not, and found themselves isolated in banlieues not unlike those represented in Kassovitz’s film.
Upon refusal to conform, many members of these immigrant groups became socially alienated from the rest of the population, essentially rejected from the society that had just recently demanded their participation. This alienation reveals a phenomenon the French call fracture sociale or social fracture, which one film reviewer describes as “the yawning socio-economic rift that has increasingly developed in France between those who have and those who have not, which all too frequently means those who belong to and practice the dominant culture and those who do not” (West 76). Kassovitz depicts this rift in multiple scenes, one of which is an aerial shot where the audience is flown over the sprawling labyrinth of buildings that make up the banlieue. This perspective provides a unique view of the scale of the complex as well as its stark differences from the elegant Gothic architecture found in the streets of Paris just a few miles away. Offering historical context for the Paris banlieues in his biography of Kassovitz and his body of work, writer Will Higbee also describes how “the uniformity of the tower blocks and banks of low-rise housing fostered a profound sense of alienation in residents” (51). Paris markets itself as the capital of romance, rarified arts, and fine dining, but this front of luxury hides a reality of inequality, imperialism, and marginalization in the banlieues, a side of France rarely seen by tourists or in films. In La Haine, Vinz, Saïd, Hubert, and their respective immigrant communities, unwilling or unable to conform to the ideals of full French citoyens are kept segregated from the rest of the population (Bleich 172).
The trio ends up spending half of their time in the glittering capital that is Paris. There, the Parisians treat them as foreigners despite living only twenty minutes away, speaking the same language, and belonging to the same nationality. Every encounter seems to end in violent disputes; for example, they stumble into the opening of a gallery only to be shoved out a couple minutes later, or they are “randomly” stopped, arrested, and even tortured by police officers. As Higbee states, “The ability to enter the hegemonic space of the centre by riding in on [public transport] does not . . . foster a greater sense of social integration for the trio. Rather . . . it merely serves to emphasize the vast difference (as much cultural as socio-economic) that separates the inhabitants of the cité and the more affluent areas of Paris, despite geographical proximity” (74). Despite their proximity to Paris and their literal French citizenship, many Parisians will refuse to see the boys (and the marginalized communities they represent) as true French citizens. Although their parents immigrated from different countries, the three boys share outsider status; there is a gulf between the people of the banlieue and the institutions meant to serve them from which grows a cycle of violence and anger.
Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert appear to distrust France as much as France distrusts them, and a society built on mutual suspicion will not survive. In one of his speeches from the same year the film was released, newly elected French President Jacques Chirac said, “In the impoverished suburbs there is a weak terror. When too many young people see only unemployment or small jobs after incomplete studies, they end up revolting. For the time being, the State is trying to maintain order, and the social treatment of unemployment has not yet reached its worst point. But when will it?” (“C’est l’emploi”). His jarring question reflects the fear, incertitude, and fragility of a society built on hate. La Haine may have only captured twenty hours, but it can be understood as a window into a system. Without attempts to mend the social rifts depicted in the film, France’s submission to hatred may be as pre-determined as Vinz’s death—a hamartia centuries in the making. This conclusion is bleak, but so are the lives of the marginalized immigrants in the banlieues of Paris, and Kassovitz wants to confront us with this reality rather than ignore it any longer. In the last seconds of the film, we hear two sounds as we watch Saïd’s terrified face while Hubert and the officer stare down the barrel of each other’s guns. First, there are the now-familiar sharp metronomic ticks of the clock, representative of a bomb on the brink of explosion, growing louder as death inches nearer. Then, we hear one final voiceover from Hubert: “This is a story about a society that is falling and during its fall, to reassure itself, it repeats: So far so good. So far so good. So far so good. The importance is not in the fall, it’s in the landing” (01:36:49-01:37:11). The final punctuating gunshot marks the third senseless death of a young man from the banlieue within twenty-four hours. If the importance is “in the landing,” this ending begs the question: have we already crashed?
Works Cited
Bleich, Erik. “The Legacies of History? Colonization and Immigrant Integration in Britain and France.” Theory and Society, vol. 34, no. 2, 2005, pp. 171-195. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4501720.
Higbee, Will. Mathieu Kassovitz. Manchester University Press, 2006.
La Haine. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, performances by Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, and Saïd Taghmaoui, The Criterion Collection, 1995.
“September 27, 1966: MLK—A riot is the language of the unheard.” YouTube, uploaded by CBS News, 15 Mar. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K0BWXjJv5s
“Struggle for Equality: Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.” Scholastic, Jan. 2011, web.archive.org/web/20100307174816/http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4812.
Vince, Ronald W. “hamartia.” The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance, edited by Dennis Kennedy, Oxford University Press, 2011. Credo Reference, search.credoreference.com/content/entry/oupotap/hamartia/0?institutionId=577.
Vincendeau, Ginette. La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995). University of Illinois Press, 1995.
West, Joan M. “Review: La Haine.” Cinéaste, vol. 33, no. 1, 2007, pp. 76-77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41690606.