Hatred breeds hatred

La Haine (Hatred, French, 1995)
Screenplay, Direction: Mathieu Kassovitz

This hint has been present throughout our history. Contended people make peaceful nations. Peaceful regions bring prosperity, meaning wealth. When people have money jingling in their pockets, they can fill their stomachs and are happy. They are kind to each other and respect each other.

I still remember my history teacher, Mr LKK, in his theatrical manner, describing the scene in France in 1789 before the Bastille invasion. The peasants were hungry, while King Louis XVI and Mary Antonette were busy enjoying their cakes. This resentment eventually, as we know it, changed world history.

This film tries to highlight the same point: Resentment among the people brings hate, and hate begets more hate. The people in the lower socioeconomic strata will always get the raw end of the bargain. Any new legislation or taxation will affect the poor more than the affluent. Understandably, they are the community with the lowest threshold for dissatisfaction.

The hate that brews in the suburbia and the poorer side of town is dangerous. When people are helpless, violence remains the last bastion of expression. This film was hailed for highlighting the slow cancer growing in the banlieues (troubled French suburbs) that needed government attention before it became a national catastrophe. Sadly, the result of that warning is reality. Frequent rioting in French, German and Belgian suburbs is common.

The film tells the story of a broken suburbia. There is no economic activity, and the young have no future to plan for. They identify themselves with gangs. Three young lads, a Franco-African, a Jew and a Muslim, are close friends. There is a semblance of a school but hardly any teaching. Children are not interested, and the outdoors is dangerous, with frequent rioting and police raids.

One gang member is seriously injured by the police. It angers one of the two teenagers in the story. The rest of the tale is about their wasteful wandering, doing seemingly unproductive things, and getting into the wrong side of the law in the next 24 hours.

It is about a society in free fall, the nightmare that no nation leader would want to see in his tenure. The responsible citizens must read the writing on the wall and act accordingly. When the domino wall starts falling, there is no stopping. The dialogue at the end of the movie tells it all. When the society is going down, it tells itself, 'so far so good, so far so good'. It does not matter how it falls; all that matters is how it ends!

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It is the suspense!

The Day of the Jackal (1973)
Director: Fred Zinnemann

It is like watching a sitcom re-run or a delayed telecast of a football game of which you already know the result. This movie describes an assassination attempt on President De Gaulle's life. History buffs would already know that is not how he died, and the attempt failed. Nevertheless, the excitement and anticipation of how the plan was foiled kept the suspense going.

Charles de Gaulle became the President of France in 1958 when France had just lost one of their most profitable colonies in the East, Indochina. When the Battle of Algiers reached its peak, De Gaulle discussed the self-administration of Algeria with the guerillas. Subsequently, Algeria became independent, and many Frenchmen were expelled. Under the umbrella organisation OAS, sympathisers of French Imperialism and the military forces decided that De Gaulle had to go.  

In October 1962, in a failed assassination, De Gaulle escaped a rain of 150 bullets that rained over 7 seconds into a Saab car, ferrying him from a conference. The organiser of that crime was apprehended and executed later. That was where Frederick Forsyth's fictional account of another attempt at knocking off De Gaulle began in his 1971 novel.

In the novel, the vestigial members of OAS, now in hiding, hire an unknown assassin from the UK, possibly, to assassinate the French President. The rest of the story is about how the French Police try to identify, pin down and save De Gaulle, who has no inclination to stay away from public image despite the threat.

It is interesting to see how forgery was done, and police manually went through file after file to look for criminals in the pre-computer era. Still, work got done, and crooks got nabbed. This police procedural drama keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, not because they do not know the endeavour will fail but wanting to know how the police foiled the plan and where it went wrong.

Interestingly there is another assassin, this time a flamboyant Venezuelan communist militant, who was linked to many terrorist attacks around the world in the 1970s and 80s. Because he was a South American, he was nicknamed Carlos. During an exploration of one of his hideouts, a copy of Frederick Forsyth's 'The Day of the Jackal' was found. Henceforth, he was referred to as 'Carlos the Jackal'.

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Mud in the face, big disgrace...

Welcome to New York (French-English; 2014)


I cannot fathom why the doyen, Gérard Depardieu, the name who is synonymous with modern contemporary French cinema would stoop so low as to appear in a meaningless movie like this one.
It is no secret that it is a thinly veiled saga of the defamed ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. There are too many similarities between the two to deny.
If one were to think that the film was made to highlight how he was framed, or show another version of how it have happened or how the whole fracas affected his career or his nomination of Presidency, you are in for a surprise.
It depicts none of those.
As you are aware, this high flying big gun with a soft spot for the fairer sex was to go for Presidency of France. The fact that the the accusation of rape by a chamber-maid in a New York so near before the win event screamed to high heavens of conspiracy theories. However, the film depicted none of the above. In short it was a pure meaningless graphic display of warped deviant show of lust and its varieties. The actual story only picked up towards the second half of show, that too in a wishy-washy malaise fashion.
It paints DSK as a remorseless sloppy oversized man way past his prime who thinks that everything can be bought with money. Everybody else is a persona non grata, the only important thing to him seem to be luring females and fulfilling his lust.
Jacqueline Bisset plays the role of his wife, Monique, whose is fed-up with his antics. She is more worried of how that snafu would jeopardise her advancement in her career as she is all too familiar with his skirt chasing habit.
The film is extremely draggy detailing all irrelevant detail including a full monty strip search of Depardieu in prison. After living in exile in Russia after tax problems in his native country France, perhaps he does not care much about French cinema and it is pay back time!
The French cinema has 'self censored' itself by not screening it in its theatres. The producers may have a hard time defending against the many legal suits that the Strauss-Kahn family is soon to file.