In the past few years, the refugee problem has become a big issue in various European countries. The director La Lie was born in the bottom of Paris. This film also combines his own growth experience and the various realities faced by other immigrants in their lives.
The little Issa in the movie is the epitome of thousands of small immigrants in Paris. Their parents are immigrants, but they are French natives, and they speak French the same as other French people. The day before the French team won the championship, Issa and his buddies ran to the bar to celebrate the French team's victory. This scene is very interesting. The children in these slums have different skin colors but they are wearing the French team jerseys and the French flag just like the people in the square, cheering for Mbappe together. At this moment they are French, and they also consider themselves French.
But back to the residential area, they seem to be different. Immigrants like Little Issa have special gathering areas in Paris. In this community, the unemployment rate is high, the crime rate is high, women prostitution, and men drug trafficking, except for the police, no other white faces can be seen. Stephane, the new policeman who came to work in this area, still cherishes all the good things about a fair society. Stephane had been in Cherbourg before coming to Paris. Cherbourg is an important industry and port in France, with a relatively single race. Stephane was transferred to Paris not because of how good his work was, but because his son was sentenced to his ex-wife after the divorce. When he came to Paris, he would be able to reunite with his son. Stephane thought very well.
The reality is that police work in Paris is much more complicated than Cherbourg. He was put in a team with Chris and Gwada on the first day of employment. Chris is famous for being "law enforcement crazy" in the police station, and Gwada is also a person of color. He grew up in a slum. Fortunately, his mother kept him educated and got him out of the slum quagmire. Gwada and Chris have been partners for many years. Their jurisdiction includes the immigration area where Little Issa lives. They can be said to be "experienced" in handling disputes between immigrants.
As soon as they arrived at the police station, the three of them saw the little Isa who was being arrested for stealing and being reprimanded loudly by his father. No one really cares why Little Issa is going to steal a bag of live chickens. The lives of other children in the immigration area are similar to that of Little Issa. Some play with their drones to watch girls changing clothes, or they are bought by the Muslim Brotherhood in the community, and they usually go to the temple to worship, and the brotherhood will give these children. Some food and drink. However, at critical moments, these children will also participate in some unclean businesses, which can be regarded as an exchange of interests for the time being.
The children who grew up here have seen the complex human nature early on, and have also figured out a way of their own survival. On weekdays, they have nothing to do and do not have parental supervision, because there are too many children in the family and parents can’t control them. They don’t have school, so they play in sordid parks in groups of their own skateboards, wearing pirated Nike pants made in China. ,shoe. Get involved in petty theft, and even steal a lion to show off to the circle of friends. Children like Isaac are stepping between the two worlds. They are the bottom of the French society. They also know that the mainstream society does not wait to see them. On the other side is the backward Africa that cannot go back, where people will be brutally burned to death because of disputes.
The adults in the community did not escape their fate. Race, beliefs, and language cut the immigrants here into different ethnic groups. Muslims have a restaurant business, Africans have an open-air market business, and Gypsies have a circus business. It is an unwritten rule that each ethnic group does not disturb each other, each earns its own money, and no one can get involved in other people's territory.
This unwritten rule can also be easily broken, because although they belong to the same community, there is no trust among the various ethnic groups. Muslims regard lions as noble animals, they should not be kept in cages, but they have to fly in the grassland. But in the eyes of gypsies, the lion is an animal used to make money. In the eyes of children like Isa, the lion is a tool used to show off on the Internet.
When Stephane came here for the first time, immigrants from these communities didn't pay attention to the new police officer at all. It was not until he recovered the video taken by the drone that he truly realized the complexity. Chris, as a senior police officer, of course knows that if the outside world knows that a child in a slum has been shot and wounded, there will be a storm of public opinion, and it is guaranteed that he will be laid off. Other forces in the slums can use the video as a tool to threaten the police, let the police become their own umbrella, or watch the police upset this video as their tool. An interest relationship has formed secretly between the people in the slums and the police. No one really cares about the injured Issa, and Baz who filmed the video. The younger generations are just pawns in the game between adults.
These immigrants arrived in France, but they did not fully integrate into the French society. But on the land of France, a new society was established. They do not go to the Champs Elysées and Galeries Lafayette, but go to the open-air stalls in the community center to buy counterfeit Nikes and Adidas. Rather than depositing money in the bank, they are more willing to give the money to people they trust to use as funds for crisis. They don’t believe in French police, French law, French freedom, equality, and fraternity. They don’t read Sartre, Voltaire, and Hugo, but they live like a miserable world.
The children who have been treated unfairly do not make sense. Because they know that not many people care about their identity and status. His life is worse than that of a lion. The police and the adults in the community have not put forward the concept of public power. In their eyes, the exchange of private interests is far more than fairness and justice. So Chris dared to shout that sentence in front of the kids in the slum: "I am the law".
For all this, the children see it in their eyes and remember it in their hearts. At the critical moment, there is something to learn, so at the end of the film, the next generation of immigrants wear black clothes and pick up incendiary bombs, just like the police and adults treat them.
The movie reminds me of traveling to France. What impressed me was not only the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, and the banks of the Seine during the day. There are also refugees who set up tents at the railway station and Montmartre for the night. Some of them don't even have tents. They slept directly on the park chairs, and they could smell urine when they walked over. We live in a youth hostel near the Moulin Rouge. The staff at the hostel warned us not to take a walk around the Seine at night, because tourists are often robbed there. On the Champs-Elysées, three or five gypsy girls greeted each other with smiles, and put their hands in your pocket while you were not paying attention. Fortunately, there was only one subway ticket and a few in my pocket. Change coins. Under the Eiffel Tower, African immigrants peddled a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower souvenirs. I bought a refrigerator magnet and turned it over to see that it said "fabrique en chine".
Unemployment rates in Europe have been rising in recent years. Old Europeans still don't forget the glory they once had, completely turning a blind eye to the rising emerging countries. The immigration problem has not been solved as well as imagined. Westerners always feel that their social system is extremely superior. Any immigrant will integrate in, but the reality is often the opposite. As Huntington said: “Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world. When writing its own history, it seems to be writing the core script of human history. Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.
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