Hunger

Hunger is a powerful and disturbing feature-film debut for the visual artist Steve McQueen. The film takes place almost exclusively within the confines of a high-security prison in Northern Ireland, where many members of the Irish Republican Army are interned. The small confines of the prison serve as a microcosm of the wider Troubles in Ireland. The conflict between the British wardens and the Irish inmates escalates steadily, with each indignity and abuse inevitably leading to another.

The conditions revealed in the prison are deeply disturbing, with the inmates fouling the jail with effluent and the guards responding with ritual humiliation and savage beatings. McQueen's camera is an unflinching witness to the squalor and cruelty, and with the vivid imagery and forceful sounds it is almost possible to smell and feel the frightening environs of the film.

Although the focus of the film ultimately falls on Bobby Sands, the IRA member and inmate who leads a fatal hunger strike within the prison, we are not introduced to the main protagonist until a third of the way through the film. This approach works remarkably well in setting the scene for the main narrative, but it is disappointing that the different perspectives on each side are somewhat sidelined thereafter, as Sands's personal struggle takes centre stage.

The terrible squalor of the prison cells provides some of the film's most powerful images, but it is the second third of the film that is the most gripping, as Sands converses and argues with a visiting Catholic priest. An unmoving camera is trained upon these two protagonists for what must be nearly half an hour, as Sands reveals his plan for a new hunger strike and defends his methods of achieving political goals, ultimately berating what he sees as the priest's despondency and inertia. This is an utterly compelling piece of cinema.

However, at the end of this gripping conversation, the director sees fit to insert a somewhat tortured analogy as Sands recalls for the priest a defining moment of his boyhood. This is an unnecessary effort to inject conventional beauty into Sands's story, and sits awkwardly with the general tone of the film.

In the final third of the film, the hunger strike is depicted in by now characteristically brutal detail. Lead man Michael Fassbender clearly underwent a very painful regime to portray the wasting and withering of Bobby Sands in his last days. Unfortunately, amidst the impressive attention to detail, McQueen goes further in romanticising his main protagonist through a series of flashbacks to Sands's childhood. This again jars with the realistic feel of the rest of the film, and points to McQueen's obsession with Sands, which he has admitted to having had since a young age.

Although at times steering a little close to hagiography, McQueen's directorial debut is still a bold and engrossing film that cultivates an understanding for the very different people caught in up in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It will be fascinating to see what his next project will be.

It's 1981. Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham) is a guard in the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland. Davey Gillen is a new IRA prisoner who refuses to wear prison uniforms. He's put in with Gerry who has smeared the cell with his own feces. They smuggle things in and out of the prison. Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) leads the prisoners in a hunger strike.

It's quiet film and full of little details. It doesn't wallow in the brutality but lets it envelop the movie. There is a realism in the movie that is more powerful than any flash or action sequence. One really gets the sense of dehumanization. Dialog is sparse but there is a great discussion between Sands and Father Dominic Moran. This is quietly brutal and some great performances including Fassbender.

Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) did something that was a risk, one that would have made others squirm or back out. He was in prison already for four or more years, as a leader in the IRA in Ireland, when he decided to go on a hunger strike. Not just him, mind you, but others along with him, who would all go hungry and, more than possibly, put their bodies on the line for the sake of their brothers in the war, until Britain did something. But the brilliance of Hunger is that director Steve McQueen (not to be confused with the action star) gives us a very straightforward (shockingly so) view of the conditions at the prison, the cell-block where IRA members were put in cells, inhumanely in fact, with feces commonly strewn on the walls and prisoners regularly beaten by SWAT teams and prison guards in general... then, after a very long scene of talk where Sands hears his own plan in front of a priest, the hunger strike in action. It's unrelenting cinema.

It's also sometimes a bit much to take in. You have to know this is not at all melodramatic, but done with little dialog, sometimes in just a few words or whispers (a female narrator pops up once or twice to put things into a sort of context), and compositions that bring out claustrophobia and the endless time spent in the prison. One might wonder why McQueen chooses to keep a shot going for so long on something as trivial, or just routine, as a guard cleaning up the urine left by all the prisoners in the hallways (all in one shot), but it's about that really: the routine of a horrible process of living, of 'us' and 'them' between the prisoners and the guards in this Northern Ireland prison, with Sands as a sort of unofficial leader inside. The length of shots, and the moments where characters burst out in anger and rage, are deliberate and dramatic and powerful.

If I had any problem with Hunger, it's that it is misleading in its first half hour. We're given two prisoners, not Sands, and a prison guard, and we're shown the horrid conditions of living in a solitary-confined prison (feces on the wall, anyone?). But Bobby Sands, the main character, isn't introduced for quite a while. It's an outstanding scene when he is introduced, kicking and pounding and getting beaten down as his hair and beard are cut, yet by then it's been perhaps too long to get to this point. It's also jarring how McQueen structures his film it terms of silent and sound: there's a fifteen minute stretch (almost all in one two-shot) where there's nothing but dialog between Sands and the priest (albeit a riveting conversation about sacrifice and humanity), but aside from this it's all just watching first the IRA members in the horror of prison conditions, and second Sands in his deterioration of the hunger strike.

And yet it is a powerful experience and a stunning debut. It reminds me a little like The Machinist in observing its lead character fade away, literally, before our eyes, only here the stakes are far greater than a tricky neo-noir plot. Fassbender is also mesmerizing for any given moment he's on screen. And yet as great as the film ultimately may be, or is, I don't have a desire to watch it again. It's about as bleak as a rainy day in Dublin - I mean a real rainy day. You won't feel good when the movie ends, but you'll know you have seen the emergence of a filmmaker with something to say, and an actor who will go to the limits, much like Christian Bale, for the sake of the character's importance in the story. Frankly, it rarely gets more dramatic and life-or-death than Bobby Sands.

I saw Hunger at TIFF. I heard it was a hot ticket, and pre-festival buzz was good so I was elated when I got tickets. McQueen uses very little dialogue throughout the film, instead choosing to communicate through strong visuals and raw imagery. The film is less about the politics behind the IRA conflict, and more about the suffering of the prisoners and the dehumanization of them at the hands of the guards. It is not an easy film to watch. The imagery is so strong and raw that I couldn't help but grimace during some parts. The lady sitting next to me had her hands covering her face at one point, and was visibly crying. McQueen holds nothing back. The prisoners are shown smearing excrement over their cell walls and pouring their prison food over the floor until it goes bad and are covered with bugs. McQueen demonstrates the unwillingness of the prisoners to be stripped of their dignity (by conforming to prison demands), despite being stripped of everything else. There are some very long takes with no dialogue, with a particularly long one of a prisoner cleaning himself for what seemed like forever. The atmosphere in these scenes is so visceral that one can almost feel the filth and smell the stench of the prisoners. There is also one particularly brutal scene where the guards make two lines, and each nonconforming prisoner is marched through the middle while being repeatedly beaten by batons. Afterward, one of the officers walks outside and weeps. It is then that we learn to see the guards as human; perhaps even victims trapped within a conflict with no resolution in sight.

The story of Bobby Sands takes precedent about half way into the film. The most dialogue in the films occurs during the scenes between Sands and his priest. Unfortunately the Irish accents are thick, and I found the scene hard to decipher. The final scenes in the film are tough to watch as we witness Sands' slow dissent into the throes of starvation. It is hard to imagine anyone subjecting themselves to such suffering, yet 9 other prisoners followed suit. Fassbender is very good in the role; giving us a character that is unrelenting in his choices and beliefs. He genuinely believes his suffering serves a purpose, and though some may disagree with his choices, one can't help but admire his conviction.

Hunger is an artfully done film, which is no surprise considering McQueen is a visual artist. It is visually moving and challenging piece of work. It is hard to believe that it's his first feature, and easy to understand why it won the Camera d'or, and now the Discovery award at TIFF. I would have preferred a bit more back story to the conflict (I know close to nothing of its history), but then again, choosing to put more focus on politics may have taken away from other elements of the film. Lastly, I appreciate McQueen's unwillingness to take a stand on the conflict/protest in his film. He allows the viewers to make their own judgments; he's merely here to tell the story.

1981.

The H block in Belfast's Maze Prison.

This film captures the development and escalation of protest by the 'political' prisoners held here as things moved through 'The 'Blanket protest' onto 'The Dirty Protest" and finally to 'The Hunger Strikes' that claimed Bobby Sands and eight of his compatriot's lives.

As the end credits of the film show, the enemy, in the form of Margaret Thatcher was 'not for turning' and did not grant political status to these men that she considered no more than murderers. They did, however, lead to many concessions - bit by bit.

This astounding movie falls into three very clear sections; the gut wrenching blanket and dirty protest; a long and deeply personal conversation (in one 20 minute take) between Sands and his priest where Sands is asked to justify and then walk away from the impending hunger strike; and finally Sands' ordeal itself.

Each section has a different pace and personality. Each is desperate in its own way.

This film pulls few punches. The stench of human excrement is almost palpable in the opening act and the way in which Michael Fassbender brings Sands' death to the screen is almost unbearable.

But the real triumph of the film is that it takes no political sides and makes no judgements but does not sit on the fence. How? Because it invokes the viewer to do that themselves. Sands is neither a figure to pity or to vilify. It really is quite remarkable that the artist Steve McQueen can achieve this so consistently.

And this is art with a capital A. Every scene is stunningly rendered. The pace, at times snail-like, allows you consider in real detail the situation these men found themselves in (or created however you want to look at it).

Fassbender's performance is miraculous.

McQueen though, is the star of the show. One scene in particular when the men slop out by pouring their night's urine under the doors of the corridor simultaneously is quite beautiful, as is the Hirst-like art that some of them create from their excrement (that's what makes up the poster image).

Film of the year. No contest.

Incidentally we saw it in the DCA's Cinema 2. What a cracking screen.

(As we scoffed coffee and fudge doughnuts. How's that for irony?)