How far can it be argued that your chosen films provide a realistic representation of the people and places they focus on?

La Haine features it setting on Les Banlieues. The projects are filmed on location, and are shown after the riot footage. These riots taking place is actual archive footage, between the French police and ethnic minorities. This enforces realism onto the audience from the very start of the film, and is shown combined with the soundtrack of Bob Marley’s song, ‘Burnin’ and Lootin’. This creates a documentary style to the starting scene, and the song seems to create a bigger stance over the police in these riots. After this scene, the film moves straight onto the projects. This reinforces that the sense of realism is embedded into La Haine. The view we see of the projects is set in black and white, creating a strong sense of the working class life there. Nothing is stylized, creating a realistic representation for the film’s setting.

There are several references in regards to real life events in La Haine. For example, the interrogation scene and the link to the Makome M’Bowole case. Both Hubert and Said are picked up by the police because of a minor disturbance, similar to M’Bowole. He got arrested for stealing a packet of cigarettes. Ethnicity comes into the situation also; Vinz isn’t arrested because of the colour of his skin, and the fact that he can come off as being French. This isn’t the case for the other two characters. They are arrested due to their ethnicity. Hubert and Said are being interrogated in the police station, more like violent abuse. For the police, this is institutionalized racism, an accepted part of culture for a significant minority of the French police. The further reference within this scene occurs when one of the policemen threatens Hubert by saying, “You want me to put this gun to your neck?” This is a direct connection between M’Bowole’s death as he was shot in the neck while being interrogated. This is a dramatization between of a real life event and a scene in the film, evermore increasing the idea of realism.

Though this is true, we can assume that not all police are like this and that they don’t carry out these type of acts, we only see a police’s point of view when the interrogation scene occurs, though the young policeman doesn’t actually take part in the interrogation, he is complicit in the activity, he does nothing to stop it form happening. So, in one sense the representation of real life events is quite realistic, the point of view is biased and therefore we can’t entirely take in this representation as plain fact. There is two sides to every story.