La Haine: A Masterpiece
Written by Hash Rifai
The term masterpiece is thrown about far too carelessly these days, a word plastered on film posters by studios desperate to recoup their costs. Yet for Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995), no description is more fitting. Few films have captured the slow decay of a civilisation with such precision or poetry. Kassovitz crafted a work so acute in its observation of France that Alain Juppé, then Prime Minister, ordered a special screening for his cabinet. Attendance was mandatory.
The film follows Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), and Hubert (Hubert Koundé) as they drift through their banlieue in the aftermath of a riot sparked by police brutality. Their Paris is not the postcard city of quaint cafés and candlelit bistros, but a landscape of concrete towers built to contain its occupants like prisoners. La Haine is not just the story of three young men wandering through a single day; it’s about France itself, the old republic of liberté, égalité, fraternité, watching its ideals crumble beneath the weight of its own hypocrisy.
Kassovitz’s camera moves through the banlieues with documentary urgency and cinematography of stark, unpretentious beauty: wide shots of empty courtyards, long takes of aimless walking, moments of quiet stillness preceding bursts of violence. Originally shot in colour—a concession to financiers—the film was later drained to black and white in post-production. Not as a stylistic indulgence, but in the service of clarity. Kassovitz stripped away any distraction.
The performances, like the film itself, feel dangerously alive. Cassel’s Vinz is a man intoxicated by anger, his machismo slowly cracking to reveal a scared child beneath. Taghmaoui’s Saïd provides the fragile humour that keeps the film human; he is the voice of friendship in a place where friendship is often the only thing left. And Koundé’s Hubert is philosophical, weary and endlessly patient, an anchor to the trio. Their performances are so natural that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a film and they embody the archetypes of their environment so perfectly: the violent dreamer, the joker and the philosopher—all trapped in a cycle of cause and effect.
The film’s central theme is that violence is not born in a vacuum; it festers in neglect, and systemic disdain. The film’s most famous line—“La haine attire la haine,” (hatred breeds hatred)—is both a warning and an explanation. Having watched it again recently it feels like an allegory for our times; the war in Gaza and the rise in right-wing nationalism in Europe come to mind.
La Haine endures because history repeats itself. The film holds a mirror to society and reminds us to confront what we would rather ignore: that beneath every riot, every act of rebellion, lies a simple human demand—to be seen, to be heard, to be treated as equal. La Haine remains a masterpiece not because time has been kind to it, but because time has proven it right.