Set to Bob Marley and The Wailers’ resistance themed Burnin’ and Lootin’, it’s a controversial opening sure to inspire and infuriate audiences in equal measure, depending on their point of view. It opens with real footage of the riots that regularly took place between youths and police between 19 (and were continuing during filming). It’s a seriously tense film that deals with social exclusion, police brutality, racism and civil unrest. La Haine is set in the 1990s and depicts 20 hours in the lives of protagonists Said, Vinz and Hubert, living in ‘les banlieues’ (housing estates) on the outskirts of Paris. The film just ends right in a moment where we’re not expecting it. There’s no real sense of resolution and sometimes it almost feels as though the writer didn’t complete the screenplay. That’s fine the ending had satisfying resolution but then there’s a teaser that promises a new story with the same characters.īut then there are other open endings where so many questions are left unanswered that it drives us mad for years after seeing the film. The only tolerable type were in a film like Back To The Future where the film was wrapped up nicely but then the writer throws in a final twist for us to crave a sequel… ‘where we’re going we don’t need roads!’.
They give us the opportunity to create our own ending, to imagine a possible sequel, to discuss the possibilities of what happened to the characters after the final scene. Some have the power to leave you thinking about a film for days, months, or even years desperate to know what happened as the credits rolled.
Open endings are a divisive tool that can leave an audience enraged, frustrated, gasping for breath, shocked, disappointed or yearning for more.
#La haine ending series
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaouiĭeconstructing Cinema: One Scene At A Time, the complete series so far