Insurrection: Control, Power, Flow

"Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor,he kept saying to reassure himself:"So far so good..."so far so good..." How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land.". -excerpt from La Haine, 1995

The initial inquiry into the subject of insurrection was based off of the film, La Haine written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. The film follows three youths in the suburbs of Paris after a night of rioting and police violence that leaves their friend in the hospital. The question of futility was posed based off of the fact that in the film, the main character, Vinz, has a choice to make, one in which will surely lead to death. In the end he makes the “right” choice but ultimately ends up dying anyways. If the end result is the same, what difference does the choice of the individual make? Yet the film offers us another meaning in the aforementioned anecdote of the falling man which is repeated multiple times throughout the film. “How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land!” If we are to consider falling as life itself and how you land as the choice you make in the end, then we see that the individual’s choices are not irrelevant and are of utmost importance. Taken in consideration with analysis of the film, Battle of Algiers, we see that the choices of the individual are part of a greater scheme which affects the whole.