Credit: Far Out / Craig Gibson
Sun 31 May 2026 16:45, UK
“The only art I’ll ever study,” David Bowie once said, “is stuff that I can steal from.”
There’s some art, however, that captures something vague. The odd, rare masterpiece occasionally arises where you can’t quite put your finger on its magic. These works implore you to study them in a different manner, and Cillian Murphy has been doing just that with one “masterpiece” from 1995 for a while now.
La Haine, or The Hate in English, offers a simple premise: “24 hours in the lives of three young men in the French suburbs the day after a violent riot.” Notably, the men come from various immigrant backgrounds. It quietly moves through their lives with an almost pastoral indifference. This approach means that mundanity and shocking violence unfurl at the same equanimous pace.
As Murphy opines, that makes it a perfectly realistic depiction of life in rough neighbourhoods. Nothing happens, but anything can happen. The crosshairs of that inertia create an uncomfortable anxiety. As the 28 Days Later actor puts it, “It still speaks to what’s happening in France today.”
La Haine, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, doesn’t just speak to what’s happening in France, either. That unsettling atmosphere of few opportunities bar ‘the fall’, as the film christens it, is a commonplace feeling in plenty of working-class neighbourhoods. Raised among a socially conscious family in Cork, who were mostly teachers, Murphy was aware of such social mechanics from a young age.
The messaging of the movie is blunt and simple. “It’s about a society on its way down,” it even openly declares. A post-production decision was even made to put it all in black and white to eradicate any further uncertainty. Perhaps that’s why it will always remain timeless: come what may, it captures a moment in time in an unmistakable manner.
Seamless captures like that are not easy to achieve, but La Haine does it with eerie aplomb. So, it’s little wonder that frequent Murphy collaborator, Christopher Nolan, has also crowned it as a “phenomenal” film.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Starring Vincent Cassel, Saïd Taghmaoui, and Hubert Koundé, La Haine, indeed, remains vital and timeless. But above all, it is also a truly gripping watch. There’s humour, shock and plenty of commentary to ponder. But perhaps the height of its achievement is its willingness to embrace the meaningful randomness of the inner suburbs.
Take this quote, for instance, delivered by an old man in a toilet: “Do you believe in God? That’s the wrong question. Does God believe in us? I once had a friend called Grunwalski. We were sent to Siberia together. When you go to a Siberian work camp, you travel in a cattle car. You roll across icy steppes for days, without seeing a soul. You huddle to keep warm…”
At first, this old man’s tale feels like a random aside, but the more you study the film, the more the message sets in.
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