Low Culture Podcast: La Haine

In this month’s subscriber podcast, Luke Turner and John Doran heap praise on a bleak yet transcendent film by director Mathieu Kassovitz

John and Luke discuss one of their favourite films, 1995 French masterpiece La Haine. Set over the course of a day and a night in a Parisian suburb, the high-tension film charts the lives of Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, three young Frenchmen of immigrant ancestry, as they speed towards a terrible conclusion. La Haine is an exploration of the tensions between American and French culture, and mainstream French culture and that of its immigrant population. It’s also a film about boredom, and what happens to fill it under a climate of racism and police brutality. This isn’t just a French take on a hood film, but a sui generis work of high art that connects New Hollywood and the work of Martin Scorsese, the filmography of Michael Haneke, the 1980s social problem films of Ken Loach, plus the absurdist literature of Camus and Beckett. It also reveals how American rap culture meets that of France, as seen in one of the great cinematic moments of the 90s, in which a DJ scratches together KRS-One’s ‘Sound Of Da Police‘ with Edith Piaf’s ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’ out to the banlieue and the camera soars out over the streets. That incredible shot is just one of many hyper-real, strange, transcendent moments in the film; elsewhere, Vinz believes he can see a dairy cow roaming among the low rise housing blocks, even though no one else can, and when the three protagonists have a furtive conversation about murder while huddled in a public toilet, they are interrupted by an elderly Polish man who emerges from a stall to launch into a tragi-comic monologue about his friend freezing to death after taking a shit behind a bush while being deported to Siberia by train. It is a surreal, beautiful moment – one of many in a near flawless film –  that connects La Haine to some of the darkest events of the 20th Century. John and Luke discuss how the issues raised in the films are still pertinent today and why La Haine is one of very few films that would actually deserve a sequel.

To listen to this edition of the Low Culture podcast you’ll need to become a Subscriber or Subscriber Plus tier member via the paywall below. Thanks to John Tatlock for producing this episode.