By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Brian Milligan | Liam Cunningham | Liam McMahon | Michael Fassbender | Stuart Graham
Country: ireland, united_kingdom
Year: 2009
Running time: 96
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986233/
Bruce says: “Award winning video artist Steve McQueen makes a stunning directorial debut with his evocative film documenting the conditions leading up to the 1981 hunger strike led by Bobby Sands at Her Majesty’s Maze prison nine miles from Belfast.
“The film begins, not with Bobby Sands as one might expect, with the morning ablutions of Ray Lohan (Stuart Graham), one of the prison guards. He soaks his hands in a water-filled basin, hands that he has bloodied from abusing prisoners. As he leaves his house he checks for explosives underneath the car. Next we follow a new arrival at the prison. He is Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) and he refuses to wear prison clothes saying, ‘I will not wear the uniform of a criminal.’ The guard behind the desk stares him down until he removes his clothes, item by item. He is tossed a blanket and led to a cell filthy with excrement on the walls. He has a cellmate, Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon), a man already demoralized by the abuse. At visitations wives and girlfriends smuggle in food and transistor radios.
“Suddenly prisoners’ heads are smashed against walls and bodies are dragged through the corridors. One prisoner has his hair brutally cut off with scissors that cut into his face, eye and head as he struggles. This prisoner is Bobby Sands. ‘Are you all right, Bobby?’ his mother asks at the next visitation. His head covered with bruises and open wounds, Bobby replies, ‘I’m grand, Ma.’
“Mc Queen’s video background, noted for his unique perspectives, is put to good use as he examines the environment his characters inhabit. He films the prison riots and the brutal retaliation by the prison guards as a video ballet, overlapping images in extraordinary pastiche. But McQueen does not shy away from conventional filmmaking techniques. In one beautiful twenty two and a half minute scene, he uses a stationary camera placed at eavesdropping length from Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham), his friend and priest. The longer the camera remains fixed the more the viewer’s eyes and ears strain to devour the articulate content of the conversation. Diametrically opposed, the two men express their positions on hunger strike as a viable political technique. When Bobby’s conversation moves from the philosophical to a personal example from his boyhood that eloquently illustrates his principles, a close-up is used. The scene is one of the most memorable in recent history and made more so by the scene that follows. Once again a stationary camera is employed, positioned at the end of an empty cellblock corridor. One of the guards pours disinfectant of the top of the urine that has flowed into the corridor from the individual cells. He then slowly mops the floor pushing the mixture of detergent and urine towards the camera with an occasional slosh to the side, deliberately pushing the mixture into a cell or two that house inmates he presumably dislikes.
“So the hunger strike begins. Bobby’s decline is carefully documented and is difficult to watch. He wastes away. His body develops open sores which a loving orderly delicately dresses. He coughs up blood and vomits. He has convulsions and delirium as his bodily functions shut down. HUNGER illustrates how incarceration and confinement foster sub-human behavior on both sides. 5 cats
“HUNGER screened at the 2008 New York Film Festival.”
Thom says: “It wasn’t that this fantastically-made film didn’t have an abundance of merits, but it was also horribly depressing, making me numb from the unpleasant viewing. I could be wrong but I think this is Bruce’s #1 film for 2009 but I fail to understand what impact it must have given him. What really made me keep this from the highest rating is the subject matter. I have seen so many films concerning the I.R.A./English struggle and I never, ever will be sympathetic towards one side over the other. They can all fade away into oblivion for my predilection. So when Bobby Sands (beautifully played by hot-to-the-touch Fassbender) decided to go on a hunger strike (and eventually died at the age of 27 after 66 days sans food) in order to protest the treatment of Nationalist captives by the British Army, I didn’t have anyone to care about. That Fassbender had to go on a medical watch non-stop diet to give the illusion of starvation (ala Christian Bale in THE MACHINIST) does prompt the ferocity of the project, but it didn’t sway me from my criticism. 4 cats”
Beth responds: “Sorry, but my father would kill me if he knew I didn’t correct you. They didn’t strike primarily because of the way the army treated them, they went on strike to protest the British government’s combination of internment (arrest & imprisonment without charge for indefinite periods) and refusal to recognize anyone as a political prisoner, in violation of the Geneva Convention. (which sounds sadly familiar – as usual, the US has to copy the UK)
“I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I don’t know if it’s mentioned, but the hunger strike was a means of last resort in old Ireland, back when hospitality laws were held in high esteem – someone who was wronged would show up at the wrongdoer’s house and go on strike, as a physical manifestation of the wrongdoer’s utter lack of hospitality…the idea being to publically shame them into righting the wrong.
“Most of the men who went on strike were insanely young, and many were not IRA members when they were interned – of course, by the time they left, they were hardened veterans. US support of the IRA had been waning before this happened, and inroads had been made by nationalist moderates to find a peaceable solution. Arguably, Margaret Thatcher’s ‘hooligans suck’ attitude, hardline tactics and slow on the uptake response to a PR nightmare all contributed to the continuation of violence for more than a
decade, before the Good Friday Accord was finally reached.
“Here endeth the reading!
“Having said all that, though – I hear you on a really depressing topic being the only thing between 4 and 5 cats in one’s ranking of a film. Been there, done that!”
Thom responds: “Bless your heart for all this very pertinent information & history. Thatcher’s attitude was well-represented in the film and truly she was a right-wing b#tch that ranks as one of the world’s worst leaders ever. Still, even me being Irish, I haven’t embraced the Irish side either, especially because they are Catholic, another terrible source of evil in world history.”
Beth responds: “Well that’s a whole other kettle of fish! I prefer my Irish Catholicism pre-Patrick – leave Rome to the Romans, thank you very much! Columba got a raw deal, is all I’m saying…
“As for the Irish side, I think actually you are probably on it – it was to stay out of the whole mess until Northern Ireland got itself sorted out. Toughest thing to negotiate, when I lived in Dublin and was preparing to travel, was how to name where I was going: Northern Ireland? Ulster? Up North? And then once I got there, how to talk about the place with locals. Headache inducing, because Ireland being Ireland (north or south), everybody had five strongly held opinions about it!”
Chris says: “HUNGER depicts the fatal 1981 strike conducted in Belfast, Ireland by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender, absolutely magnetic but plausible) and his fellow IRA inmates. For these men, the idea of prison as rehabilitation is completely irrelevant. Jailed primarily for political rather than criminal acts, neither they nor the audience is ever under any pretense that imprisonment will alter their beliefs. The English government sees them as pests one can control but not exterminate, so they respond via an extreme means of protest—first, by not washing (covering their cell walls with their own feces and simultaneously pouring chamber pots under their doors into the corridor, creating a surreal urine river of sorts) and then by not eating.
“In his impressive first feature, director Steve McQueen (a visual artist, obviously not the long-dead iconic actor) goes to great lengths for his audience to really feel the shit and piss that dominates the film’s first half, but he does so with such unexpected, understated grace. Employing tight close-ups, precious little music or dialogue, lighting as the focal point and a subtle, nearly dreamlike pace (even the sudden dark-to-light contrasts never overwhelm or disengage), McQueen constructs an uncommonly personal biopic of Sands. Midway through, as a bridge between the film’s two acts of protest, he temporarily breaks the silence with a ten minute dialogue between Sands and a priest. This simple, beautiful sequence effectively outlines why the hunger strike must occur and why it will render Sands more than a mere martyr. Presented in a lengthy two-shot without an edit before separating the two men in a series of back-and-forth cuts, it provides all of the context and rationale any viewer will need. Since imprisonment offers no rewards in this case, we see and fully understand how only sacrificial protest can hope to bring about the greater good. 5 cats”