Realism In Film Making In 'La Haine'

In a movie the director’s style and purpose can be determined by his or her unique approach in presenting the story. Beside the director, a movie that we watch is a collective effort of many specialist artists and technicians. Each has their own ways of highlighting their views to the audience. These film styles can be defined as political, economical and social representation of the director’s point of view. The film making styles can also have an effect on the audience’s perception of the movie. Realism and formalism are to major styles of film making that is used by most of the directors to present their work. Director’s use of different camera angles, camera lenses and settings represents their style of filmmaking.

Realism in a movie …show more content…
Realism is all about giving the audience the real world feeling. In most realism movies we will notice more use of eye level medium shots and pan shots. To give the audience more realistic feeling they use handheld cameras and fixed cameras on tripod. The movie “ La Haine” by Mathieu Kassovitz can be a great example of realism film, however many critics has classified this film to be in the category of new realism. New realism is representation of neorealism from 1945-1950 period of filmmaking. This type of realism movies presents different social issues in the world. In these movies none professional actors are used with very little post editing and sounds effects. The movie “ La Haine” was released in 1995, which shows social class conflict in France around that time period. The film starts with footages from news about the riots and smoothly blends into the setting of the movie while maintaining similar visual content. This gave the audience a realistic feeling of the setting of the movie, which showed the actual living …show more content…
The use of language, settings and characters in a formalism movie gives the film an unnatural feeling. The movie focuses more on entertaining the viewer more than presenting reality. “Formalist films are often dream like. They have detailed, exaggerated sets and costumes” (Realism / Formalism / Classicism, 3). Wide-angle lenses are mostly used in a formalism movie, which gives it an unrealistic effect in the shots. Also unnatural color combinations and special effects are used to attract the audience’s attention in many ways. The movie “Amelie” by Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a great example of formalism style of filmmaking. The movie starts with a fast paced narration while showing the life of different characters. The characteristics of the characters in the film were very unrealistic. Also many special effects were used to give the movie an artificial feeling. In one of the scene, x-ray of Amelie’s heart is shown when she encounters Nino. Dramatic sound effects, close up shots and lots of worm’s eye low angle shots were used to intensify the actions in the