How far does the impact of the films you have studied for this topic depend on distinctive uses of film techniques?

The first film I studied in this topic was the French film La Haine, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz in 1995. The film uses many distinctive film techniques in order to make the impact on the audience the greatest possible such as mise-en-scene and cinematography. Personally I think the most important of these is the mise-en-scene, Kassovitz uses this to tell us so much about the characters and what situations they are in.

Kassovitz uses mise-en-scene to give us little bits about their personality. When we are first introduced to Vinz, he is shown in his bedroom, a camera rotation of 360 degrees shows us everything that is in Vinz's bedroom, the first thing we see is his trainer collection, all of the trainers seen are American branding, there is also various posters depicting sex symbols from American culture such as Marilyn Monroe, a picture of a wrestler and also a weed poster. This shows us that Vinz is deeply rooted within American culture and also smokes weed. It also shows though that Vinz rejects his parent's values, his distaste with the laws of society and his need to gain another identity of his own.

The first time we see Vinz we are introduced to his bedroom which contains a lot to do with American culture. This is due to the fact that Vinz needs to be presented as a bit of a loose canon unsure of who he is but sure he wants be someone. This is a contrast to Hubert's bedroom but Kassovitz uses the same technique of a 360 degree camera turn to show everything on the walls, Hubert's room seems to focus more on his African heritage having photos of Mohammed Ali and the black power salute.

In La Haine, the contrast of the city of Paris and the banlieues is evidently clear, not only in the streets and attitudes of the police, one calling Said 'sir', but also in the living conditions. Vinz's house where he has to share a room with his sister greatly contrasts the huge flat that Asterix is living in. This just clearly shows the difference between the city centre, seen as such a magical place and the estates on the outskirts, simply forgotten about more than anything else.

Although the mise-en-scene does promote realism it often contains messages and values from within the film. This can be seen in La Haine where the characters are sat in a park, not really doing anything, this was another technique used by Kassovitz to promote a sense of realism. Whilst they are sat here, a team of journalists approach and do not even leave the car, this shows how Paris and a lot of the world view these banlieues as underclass. The scene is set up as if the trio are in a zoo, there is the high walls where the characters sit unoccupied and visitors come and look over the fence at them. this is even referred to within the dialogue, when Hubert says to the reporters that they are not in a safari park.