In La Haine, the city, or more specifically the Banlieue is definitely a defining presence. It acts as a home for the characters and the narrative, but also, and perhaps more importantly, as a trap or even a grave. It informs everything about the characters – the same people raised in say, a country town would have been completely different. It is small and claustrophobic – almost like a prison. The use of black and white in the film makes the whole thing look almost like CCTV footage, furthering the criminal undertone of the whole estate. Despite the fact that none of the main characters have jobs (perhaps Hubert did, but his gym has been destroyed) there is the sense that everyday life continues, and in fact Said tells a beggar on the underground to “get a job”. Drugs and alcohol abuse are ever present, needles lying on the ground apparently so commonplace they are not even worthy of note by the characters. The huge swathes of the film dedicated to them sitting in various age-worn locations, doing nothing, shows how little the city offers to them in the way of entertainment. The overwhelming feel of the film is that the people here will live their whole (probably short) lives in this location, and will almost certainly die there, as one of the main characters does.
Despite being based on a graphic novel, and presented in a very unique style, Sin City actually holds a number of comparisons to La Haine. The story does not feature a main character – instead, it features four stories revolving around Sin City, only linked by their constant references and visits to a single bar. The city in the film is shown as a hive of scum and villainy, where shooting a gun in a public place and beating people to death is not even worthy of a police presence. Every character in Sin City seems to have either started out with good intentions, or is hoping to do something right in the end, but due to the nature of the city and it’s corruption these attempts never really succeed. Specifically Dwight’s story seems to be a matter of everyday life in the city – in this we see that the “nuclear family” does not exist, much as is the case for Said and Vinz in La Haine. Women are treated abusively by the majority, and seen as sex objects for the most part. The treatment of the women by the average customer of Kadie’s Bar is only 5 years and 5 beers away from the treatment of women shown by Vinz and Said. At the end, the death of Marv, Hartigan and many others are not treated with any seriousness – they are basically forgotten. This is much like the death of Vinz at the end of La Haine – we see from the death of his friend Abdel that such a thing is not considered a big deal by the general populace – it only seems to be a matter of concern for his direct family and friends.
In summing this up, I realise that this is actually quite a poor comparison. Unfortunately after half an hour of consideration I couldn’t think of any other film in which the city is such a defining presence on the film as a whole, and so this will have to do for now.
