Army of Shadows vs. La haine
http://feelthefilms.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/army-of-shadows-vs-la-hai ne/
Sometimes similarities and differences pop out of two films for an analyst in an overt fashion, while other instances they are not spelled out for the viewer to take notice. Overlapping similarities can be discerned from two films in French cinema that may not look like they have a lot to compare and contrast with one another on the surface, but when eyes can be opened to things we take for granted with the films, La haine (1995) and L’armée des ombres (1969), translated to Army of Shadows. The gang driven films about fighting the system, rooted in violence, challenge the characters’ loyalties while the filmmakers play with the artistic visions.
Army of Shadows is a masterful mantelpiece of director and screenwriter, Jean-Pierre Melville. In his film, he represents a specific time in French history in its exploration of the French Resistance. Melville shows the gritty, painful truth occupied France and the struggle of the people in hiding. They were concerned with getting to the next day and hiding themselves. Safety was the most vital thing for members of the French Resistance.
The members of this organization did not value friendship with individuals, but instead loyalty to their cause. Army of Shadows is an impressive piece of cinema due to its beautiful color cinematography, rich representation of its subject matter, and the watchable factor that makes it so accessible as a feature film to audiences today.
La haine’s topic of discussion is pinned to something as specific as the French Resistence, in particular discussing gang violence amongst adolescences. The screenwriter also doubles as the director (Mathieu Kassovitz) like Army of Darkness, but the vision differs completely from the latter. La haine is a social commentary on the state of France’s lower class youth. With distinctive stylized shots of black and white film, La haine is laid back vision of a possible scenario while it explores its unique characters.
La haine is a more documentary-eqaue take on the violence of the street rather than Army of Shadows, which completes a whole film. This aspect defies belief of the expected about the materialistic aspect of filmmaking: it is easier to dramatize a story about the street, rather than pull the wrong notes in a complex Holocaust film.
In the making of these two films, the directors have two distinct decisions about the manner of shooting their projects. Melville choses to show us his interpretation of the French Resistence using color cinematography. Though he has many shots that take place in dark settings, the audience is still expressed the colors, something that ignites optimistic hopeful feelings, ironic because in the Resistence there is no hope, only savage actions trying to get through the next moments.
In La haine, the gang we follow for the duration of the film is not running from the police like the Resistence runs from the Nazis, they seem to have more aspiration for a better future. Strangely, La haine (a newer film by thirty years) is the feature shot in black and white photography to drown out the harshness of the world of the underprivileged.
Army of Shadows and La haine have clear subject matters about being united with people in a group that values an idea above all else. But the groups means specifically different things to the characters in the two films, they’re fighting different images of authority for different reasons, and the way the public understands these groups in modern society are different.
In Army of Shadows the characters find themselves drawn to each other through the bigger cause, withstanding from the Nazis and their extreme orders of labor and death. The characters Phillippe, Luc, and Mathilde are binded by a feeling of survival and they treat their relationships with each other like a business transaction. They have a set of rules they follow and if they disobey those set restrictions, consequences ensue that would not have if followed correctly.
The Resistence is kept in extreme secrecy and they act as carefully as humanly possible. The members do not even trust their family members enough to let them know of their role in this secret organization of goodwill and living. They try to resist the Nazis, a dictatorship that values are not humanely compatible. The actions of Nazis are unjust and the world recognizes the harm and devastation they inflicted on the Jewish community and the world. The members of the Resistance are seen as the “good guys” for even having the courage to stay alive.
A membership is formed in La haine, but a more casual one and that is less led like a business. Vinz, Hubert, and Said are all great friends, that is where their mutual alliance began and was founded. In La haine, we see them as our heroes and are asked to release our shadow onto the image of the characters as a source of identification, but the lines of right and wrong are more skewed than they are with Army of Shadows. In La haine, the “gang” is literally a street gang that inflicts terror onto people wealthier or luckier than themselves. They do not do this on purpose per se, sometimes they feel that must perform these actions to go on with their lives because they have nothing, but there are instances where they know better, but chose to purposely hurt, scare, or steal from others to amuse themselves.
Their argument for forming an alliance is harder to defend because they pit themselves against police officers and people of higher authority. Police are employed to protect the overall community and ensure the safety of situations that are out of control, unlike the Nazis mercilessly murdering Jews based on one man’s delusional beliefs about the human race. However, the story La haine tells is one from the inside with the gangs as our protagonists, so we understand their pain and why they seek out revenge on police and stir trouble out of desperation. When you have nothing, it’s easier to sink to levels of hopelessness, resulting in stealing, murdering, or just inflicting pure violence.
The common factor is the “higher authority” the two gangs are running from are represented in with negative connotations. The audiences are pressured from the directors to dislike the Nazis from Army of Shadows and police from La haine because both
authority figures are guilty of murdering or causing physical harm to friends of the gang and the members of the gang themselves. Both groups, the Resistance and the gang, act out of defense for their safety and retaliate with violence back to the opposing side to provide safety.
A huge similarity that also has its shades of differences is the conclusions of Army of Shadows and La haine concluding the films with a final scene of the one of the members of the “groups” being murdered, the manner in which they are killed is the same, but the reason for their deaths differ and the facts that motivate the deaths are completely divergent.
In Army of Shadows, Mathilde is the member of the Resistance that is killed in the final scene. The members of the resistance learn she betrayed their confidence and secrets to save her daughter. Even if it was to safe a child of her own, Mathilde went against the code and put the lives of innocent people in danger. She was already caught by the Nazis, even if they let her go there’s a possibility they would still come after her once they released her.
The information she fed to the Nazis to release her and the threat of her daughter was marginally damaging to the Resistance as a whole, the members did not want to kill her after everything she accomplished with them, but it had to be done. Even when she dies from being shot, she barely resists. Mathilde knows she betrayed her loyalties and therefore accepted that death. She was put in a no-win situation, as were the other members of the Resistance, but it had to play out the way it would.
The finale of La haine begins with Vinz’s realization that he is not able to kill as easily as he first believed and Hubert, the most down-to-Earth gang member, proved to be the one that would be able to kill if put in the position. After this character development is delivered, another massacre ensues with Vinz first being murdered by a police officer, but not ending there. The bloodbath is taken further when Hubert and said police officer shoot each other dead, leaving Said as an on-looker and the sole survivor of the shootout. The entire plot has lingered on this question of murdering police and the health of their friend beaten by police. The gang members were able to talk the talk, but no fulfill their words with their actions, except Hubert, the only character of the trio that seems to have backbone.
In comparison to Army of Shadows, La haine does not make members of the group die by the hand of other members of their union because of loyalty. The police step in and take matters into their own hands by killing Vinz, Hubert kills the officer out of revenge for Vinz. An important difference is that none of the characters in La haine wanted to die, but Mathilde accepted it and maybe even was waiting for it, whereas in Army of Shadows the mass murder catches everyone by surprise.
The narrative structure of Army of Shadows and La haine differ tremendously. La haine take more of a traditional structure of storytelling and builds its story like a normal narrative arc would be executed: we meet the characters, we are introduced to their problems, we see them build their personal demons, we see them overcome it, and the finale feels complete. In Army of Shadows, part of what makes it so brilliant is the strange manner its story is presented. They begin and finish the film in ambiguous places and do not follow the rules of storytelling in terms of placing scenes on the story timeline.
Though not comparable by subject matter, Army of Shadows and La haine share similarities of gangs, death, violence, and fighting an “unfair system”, differences emerge in those comparisons such as character choices, narrative structures, cinematography, and the necessity of survival. Army of Shadows and La haine are terrific films that outline important issues of French culture, gang-youth-city violence and the French Resistance, which took place while the Nazis occupied France.
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