Compare and contrast the representation of social problems in "La Haine" (1995) and "Un Prophète" (2009)

This essay will analyse Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995) and Jacques Audiard’s Un Prophète (2009) and their representations of France’s social problems. Dominated by two genres in the 1980s and early 1990s, heritage films and cinéma du look concentrated very little on the on-going social problems in France. The representation of Paris particularly was largely portrayed as a Disneyesque locale associated with romance and glamour while at the same time in truth riots and a wide separation between classes was taking place. It was not until through the introduction of cinéma de banlieue that many of these anxieties were being uncovered on camera for the wider audience. While it can be argued that Kassovitz was not the sole creator of the new genre, the international success of La Haine did however help mobilize a whole movement of films dealing with the state of France. I find it necessary to offer an introduction to the milieu of many of the issues which saw filmmakers like Kassovitz and later Audiard make the films in question. While it can be argued that Un Prophète does not exactly fit the category of the banlieue genre, it nonetheless embodies many of the issues depicted a decade earlier.    

La Haine and Un Prophète may be over a decade apart, but nonetheless the majority of commonalities they share is very much due to the credit of France’s never-ending social problems. The restlessness and violent confrontations between the youth and police of the early 1990s saw the mass media begin to pay more attention on the suburban banlieues. The separation between the urban and suburban terrains in the period of which the films were released can be put into context by the appointment of Jacques Chirac as president in the same year of which La Haine was released. Chirac’s election promises of healing France’s ‘fracture sociale’ saw him take office, but little did it calm the nerves of the voters. Instead, Chirac’s election resulted in massive chaos when his aggressive stance for instance implemented “changes to the penal code to allow prison sentences for public order violations such as loitering in their entrance ways and stairwells” (Siciliano 2007: 217). Chirac’s right-wing government – the first in 14 years – took a specific interest in “solving” the rising concerns of the banlieues. The media’s influence in publicising an issue that had been around since the 1970s also became a large factor in the dispute. This can be traced all the way back to post-World War II France, when the aftermath of the Second World War saw a large economic boom and increase in population enter Paris creating a lack in housing migrating factory workers.

Branded as Les Trente Glorieuses, this period extended from 1945 to 1974, and was marked by extraordinary growth in the banlieues, as the so-called bidonvilles on the outskirts of the city were demolished to produce clean, modern homes (Ross 1996; Merlin 1998 in Siciliano: 215).

While France was enjoying the “glorious thirty years”, Paris was being rebuilt and modernized under the pretext of hygiene and security due to its strong economy (ibid.). The housing projects originally built for French upper- and middle-class citizens by the mid-1970s had become known as low-income housing estates mainly inhabited by immigrants seeking work from the Maghreb. It was in the 1960s when France highly encouraged a large increase in immigration from its colonies in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to find work in factories during the boom. Along with the economic success did a vast racial divide happen as the majority of the North-African immigrants now were being situated amongst one another in the now-deteriorating banlieues. When the mid-1970s hit, jobs no longer were available and many of the factory workers were now being laid off. “Between 1975 and 1990 France lost 1.3 million industrial jobs and most of the public housing estates were concentrated in the areas severely affected by this deindustrialization” (Body-Gendrot 2000 in ibid.). By the 1990s, unemployment reached from 50 to 80 percent in some banlieues and with young residents between 30 and 85 percent. Not only was the growing situation of dire living conditions being solved, but “there have actually been over 300,000 more apartments phased out than built since 1989” (Silverstein & Tetreault 2006). A growing national fear upon the youth of the banlieues – rather than simply ethnic fears – was surfacing with ample reports of crude violence and crime in the outskirts. It was at this time when the most violent confrontations between the youth and police force led to several deaths including the shooting of 16-year-old Zairian Makomé M’Bowole in 1993. Chirac’s government can be seen as further powering the debate when even tougher stances were taken, only with even more upsetting results.      

It comes to no surprise why Kassovitz chose to begin his film with images of rioting along with Bob Marley’s “Burnin’ and Lootin’’’ playing in the background. As Will Higbee writes, 

[the] song [was] originally written in response to the state-sanctioned police brutality in the shanty towns of Kingston, Jamaica during the 1970s... [and] therefore functions as a preface to the action that will follow by establishing the violent tension between the banlieue youth and the forces of law and order (2006: 70).

The music Kassovitz employs in the film is with a precise purpose with sub-culture references to hip-hop, graffiti art and break-dance playing throughout the film. After the hip-hop scene arrived in The United States in the early 1970s in New York, the Parisian banlieues by 1979 next adopted the widespread form of musical expression as a direct result of the current political situation. Much like the message in reggae, minorities’ expression through hip-hop was principally used against police brutality only now in a more aggressive fashion. Kassovitz certainly does not shy away from portraying the police force in a negative light; for instance in one scene a DJ – played by the famous Cut Killer – in the top floor of a banlieue apartment raucously blasts a remix between KRS-One’s “The Sound of da Police”, Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (No, I Regret Nothing) and NTM’s “Nique La Police”, the French version of NWA’s “Fuck the Police”. “Kassovitz contantly repeats in interviews that his film is about police blunders, thus putting it firmly in the realm of hip-hop culture, pervaded by strong anti-police feelings.” (Konstantarakos in Powrie 1999: 161) The first shots of the film firmly assert its stance in the battle between the police and the youth. The police are seen as a force with a hefty arsenal going against mere students with nothing but rocks to throw. The images pay homage to Makomé and the entire 24-hour narrative is set around a similar situation when Abdel is hospitalized as a result of police assault. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé) and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) may come from different ethnic backgrounds, but in the issues Kassovitz tries to address, skin colour is irrelevant.  The issue of the matter is the youth in the banlieues and nothing else, not even gender. As O’Shaughnessy argues, “La Haine deliberately presents us with a class-driven narrative of the banlieue’s troubles, despite the clearly signalled ethnic origins of its three main protagonists” (2007: 72). All three are unemployed with a lack of education and seemingly nothing but time on their hands. This is illustrated when after hotwiring a car not one of them knows how to drive and Hubert in one scene struggles to even help his little sister with her homework. Their daily routine consists of wandering around in search of something to do. The trio leave to Paris using the RER train at one point to claim Saïd’s unpaid debt despite the sum being reasonably modest. Much to their annoyance after being held in police custody, they find themselves missing the final departing train of the night. It is the second half of the film that truly exposes the grand problem of a nation under a severe lack of unity.    

The film can be seen as divided into two parts, the first in the banlieue and the second in Paris. Konstantarakos even describes that Kassovitz originally wanted to film the sequence of Paris in colour, even using different camera techniques for effect (Powrie: 163). Instead, he chose to shoot the first sequence by day and most of the other by night. Perhaps one of the more significant scenes of the film is when the three arrive at their station in Paris “the whole atmosphere and sound changes and they feel out of place and strangers” (ibid.); quite literally as Kassovitz’s camerawork shows. The scenery of Paris behind them is completely detached from where they stand, once more clueless of how to act. Vinz in particular embodies a tough egotistic persona confronting anyone who comes in his way, but when it comes to using the police gun he found after the riots, even if it is on a racist skinhead, he falters. The trio seem to be but mere children in an adult metropolis amputated from what France’s motto liberté, égalité, fraternité strives for. “The protagonists are paradoxically only a train ride away, but a world apart from the cosmopolitan culture of late capitalist urban space” (Siciliano: 220). The apartment they go into collect Saïd’s debt does not compare to the living quarters where they sleep. The walls are white and tall and Saïd at one point even jokes how even the police are friendlier, ironically getting arrested only moments later. When they arrive in an open art exhibit, they indulge themselves in the free food and drink available, failing to engage with any of the works. When trying to strike a conversation with a pair of women the trio’s lack in sophistication and social skills fails to impress them, resulting in calamitous disorder. 

Un Prophète offers a different viewpoint to the on-going class struggle represented through its crude penal system. Many of the social issues being played Un Prophète reappear through the character of Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim). Malik is a French Muslim coming from a rough background being imprisoned for violent acts against police officers. In Un Prophète the facts about Malik’s life outside of the prison walls are more secretive than of those in La Haine, so one is merely left with slight clues and assumptions of where he is coming from. At the beginning of the film Malik is nineteen years old sentenced to six years, being stripped of all his possessions, completely dehumanizing him in the process. In a jail interview he reveals that he was raised without parents in a youth centre until eleven years old and it is quite clear that he has not received a proper education when it is discovered he lacks the most basic reading and writing skills. When entering the prison it becomes a moral identity struggle due to the jail being divided quite literally into two groups: the Corsicans and the Muslims. Malik sticks to himself but is forced to make the decision of killing or being killed when the Corsican mob orders him to kill fellow Muslim Reyeb, the one person who at first takes care of him. There is an issue of him as a clear victim of the French colonization – when in being situated outside the sphere of society – he falls into the same category as the repressed banlieue youth. He only comes to terms with his true identity under imprisonment when his status outside the realm of society gets him into contact with other Muslims. Slowly Malik begins to realise his identity of being a Muslim when secretly viewing prayer sessions, but is in limbo between doing the right thing and staying alive. The repercussions of murdering Reyeb begin to haunt him, as he seeks help and starts to have conversations with the imaginary. This is not to suggest that Malik when released in any way is rehabilitated, but in fact quite the opposite. He enters as merely a troubled young man, but exists as an experienced criminal. The film in more obvious manner presents issues of racism and xenophobia in modern French society through the representation of the Corsicans. Corsica – under the rule of France but geographically and linguistically more Italian – in its years has pursued full autonomy from France through a number of even violent nationalist movements. While it is regarded as French, it receives very little aid from the government, therefore being one of the most underdeveloped regions. The Corsicans’ and mob leader César Luciano’s (Niels Arestrup) actions seem to characterise the dismay of belonging to France. The mob degrades Malik in various ways and through him being treated with a lower status furthermore fuels his desire to be part of the Arabs. While Audiard denies that the film serves as any sort of social commentary, he does admit to Malik being an example of a youths “rise to power, a rise to visibility” (Laurier 2010).  

To conclude, both La Haine and Un Prophète raise questions of a divided French society. Since the Second World War, France has become a multi-ethnic nation and claims of equality have been more than questionable. La Haine explores the distance between Paris and the suburban banlieues, while in Un Prophète the isolation between minorities and equality lies inside the prison walls. Kassovitz tries to focus less on issues of racism than Audiard, but nonetheless this issue almost inevitably becomes apparent especially in the second half of the film. The three protagonists in La Haine as well as Malik all beg the importance of a quality education system, which France lacks to provide for all. Chirac’s government took it upon themselves to ‘solve’ the banlieue issue by employing tougher action against an unprivileged generation. La Haine therefore presents a telling narrative, concentrating on the brutality of the police force, however, intelligently so that it can be argued that the film itself is not entirely biased in representing the police as the villain. For example the character of Samir gets Saïd out of jail, even helping Hubert with a grant to rebuild his gym which was destroyed as result of the riots. Un Prophète on the other hand explores the penal system from within, which seems to be crowded with minorities and a corrupt power structure run by the Corsicans offers little glimmer of optimism.

Bibliography

Book Sources

Higbee, W. (2006) Mathieu Kassovitz. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

O’Shaughnessy, M. (2007) The New Face of Political Cinema: Commitment in French Cinema Since 1995. New York; Oxford: Berghahn.

Powrie, P. (ed.) (1999) French Cinema in the 1990s: Continuity and Difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Online Sources

Laurier, J. (2010) Jacques Audiard’s Un prophète: An extreme case of making a virtue out of necessity. Available from: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/prop-a20.shtml

Siciliano, A. (2007) La Haine: Framing ‘Urban Outcasts’. Available from: http://www.acme-journal.org/vol6/ASi.pdf

Silverstein, P. & Tetrault, C. (2006) Postcolonial Urban Apartheid. Available from: http://riotsfrance.ssrc.org/Silverstein_Tetreault/