La Haine

I really enjoyed the film La Haine that we watched this week in class. While it was about a very serious topic involving very serious issues it was a bit comedic. I think one of the things that I found most interesting about the film was it was shot in black in white. I have very rarely seen a contemporary film shot in black, so I was rather intrigued by the directors decision to film in black in white. I came with a few ideas as to why this might have been. One of my first ideas was that filming in black and white gives a film a little bit of a timeless feeling to it. Throughout different decades different color schemes have been popular, sometimes it is bright colors sometimes it is muted colors, and sometimes when we see those color schemes we automatically think something is outdated. So if you take away color and you strip it down to the two most basic colors you really can’t associate it with any specific time. Another idea I had was that filming in black and white takes the movie down to the essentials, you aren’t distracted by the colorful painting in the back ground or the red car that drives by, you are more focused on what the director wants you to see.
The second thing that really intrigued me about the film was that directors use of comedy in the film. It was such a serious film about something very serious, and that eventually became a real situation, but the writers and actors were able to but in little comedic bits that really lightened the film up at moments, and showed that even when there are horrible things that are going on it is still okay to funny. One of these moments was when Vinz was giving Said a haircut and Said starts to freak out the moment Vinz touches his hair with the clippers, it turned out to be this really entertaining moment that could have happened between any two friends. They were also constantly making yo momma jokes which I found to be funny because honestly they never get old. I just really liked the little bit of comedy that was added in to make the film seem like a little less of a downer.


Emily Suchyta