La Haine Exam Answer

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

The film La Haine makes the viewing for audiences a realistic experience. One example of this can be seen from the opening scenes of the film. It opens with a montage of archive riot footage, which is between the police and ethnic minorities from the projects. This gives the audience an idea of how bad these riots are and what happens in them. The footage is set to a Bob Marley track called “Burnin’ and Lootin’” with lyrics in the song referring to some of the scenes and images we are seeing or are about to see in the film.

From the ending of the track and montage, we are then situated straight away into the projects. The scenes of the projects were filmed on location and it shows them how they look in the real world. This adds to the realism of the film as we see them how they really are and there is no stereotypical signifiers like graffiti everywhere as we need to stay clear from the stereotypical views that everyone has of the projects.

There are references to real life events in La Haine such as the interrogation scene between the police and Said and Hubert.  They are brought in by the police because of causing a minor disturbance in the flats in Paris trying to enter the building. When the come out of the building, we see the police waiting outside and they automatically pick out Hubert and Said to target. This is because of the colour of their skin and they can tell that they are from an ethnic background and not French. Vinz is not arrested because of his skin tone and can easily blend in and be mistaken for being French. They then get taken to the police station for an interrogation, which sees the police being very intimidating, racist towards them and gives the police authority. This links in with the Makome M’Bowle case, two police officers tortured him and shot him while he was handcuffed to a radiator.