La Haine (35)

How far does the impact of the films you have studied for this topic depend on distinctive uses of film techniques?

Scene: Opening scene

The impact La Haine has on the viewer depends not only on the subject matter but also on the use of several distinctive film techniques. The cinematography of this film is highly innovative as there are several scenes in which the the movie is shot in a way that makes the viewer believe they're seeing someone other than what is really there. It was a low budget movie but it still managed to impact on the audience through clever techniques such as fake mirrors, time markers and a sense of documentary authenticity.

In the opening sequence the entire credits are shown over real footage of riots with the song Burning and Looting by Bob Marley playing non-diegetically over it. The use of real footage gives a larger impact on the viewer as it gives the later story a sense of meaning and realism to the world. All footage used was in black and white, this removes racial divisions and points the focus more towards the social class issues. The riots would have been a terrifying experience to witness but with the music choice it not only relates to the original story of the film but also mellows out the mood as if these riots were normalised after they had happened. Being portrayed by the media in this documentary style mood, the audience is impacted substantially by beginning to understand the problems and differences between stereotypical Paris and the real Paris.

In a later scene, Vinz, Said and Hubert are sitting around together quietly and bored in a park together for hours on end. A news van shows up and begin recording; the footage they're recording is shown in order to represent how the media view the youth of the time. The media do not care that the boys were causing no trouble, they needed some footage that presented youths from the projects as malicious and violent so they provoked Vinz and only used parts of what he said in order to twist his words into a new meaning and further demolish what little respect the underprivileged youth had left from middle class society. This impacts on the viewer as they begin to realise that not everthing the see on the news should be taken as face value. The way this scene is shot links to the opening credits in a documentary style, although it is of course not real documentary footage is it filmed as if it could be. The camera is always watching them from a slight distance or from behind in order to make the documentary style of filming a reality and further comparing the film to the original Paris riots.