La Haine (1995)
This film lives up to its name. I have never seen anything else that was so intense with its depiction of hate, aggression, anger and resentment. Aggression is the primary emotion shown in basically every scene. This in itself made the viewing experience rather exhausting for me. Which may be a reasonable point for the movie given its subject matter. It was certainly effective.
Given how much praise I see this film gets everywhere and how it frequents top lists, my expectations may have been too high. I think some scenes and various elements are extremely well done and effective, but I wasn’t blown away by the film in its entirety. I felt Hubert was the most interesting of the three, because he showed some doubts and restraint against the very “tough guy” thing the other two were running all the time. The police brutality scene was also very powerful, especially with how much was said through the eyes between Hubert and the passive police officer. But given how chaotic the whole structure of the film is with all the more or less random scenes happening in quick succession without any breathing room, I was falling in and out of the film. I respect that seems to be the intent, because I can’t see making this film in any other way. But it is a very demanding film to properly connect with and I was probably only halfway there.
Rating: 3.5