This review originally ran during the New York Film Festival in 2008. “Hunger” comes out in limited release this Friday on March 20 and has a strong 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. We highly recommend it.
Impressionistic, lyrical and, at times, excruciatingly hard to watch, visual artist Steve McQueen’s (no, not that Steve McQueen) “Hunger,” won the The Caméra d’Or (“Golden Camera”) at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for good reason. It’s an intense and disquieting first film from a filmmaker we must now all watch (the Caméra prize goes to the best first feature).
Ostensibly about imprisoned Provisional IRA member Bobby Sands who lend a hunger strike to protest his prison conditions for 66 days before he died in 1981 at the age of 27, “Hunger” eschews most overt political statements about the story and uses it to tell a more personal and intimate chronicle of human suffering and the limits one will go to for a causes they believe in.
Unconventionally, the film seems to shift protagonists early on until it settle on Sands (Michael Fassbender who will appear in Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” later this year). It begins on a brooding prison guard (a quietly impressive Stuart Graham) who’s constantly soaks his battered hands (from beating inmates) in hot water. The first 20 minutes of the film is near silent and this guard, glooms inwardly and smokes — as if the violence of the prison and his actions are slowly eating away at him like a cancer.
Focus then shifts to a new inmate (Brian Milligan) who quickly learns the prison system, including smuggling in messages from loved one and the disgusting “no wash” prison protest policy which means no bathing and a cell smeared with rancid human feces.
Their self-imposed squalor is filled with rotten food, maggots in their beds, urine expertly channeled so it will leak outside into the halls is a wretched filth that is difficult to watch. Their protest gets them severe beatings, incredibly painful maltreatment and forced baths and haircuts every few months (though the violence is near relentless).
But if this miserable depiction is tough to hang with, Sands’ hunger strike (the next character we’re introduced to) is all the more brutal and disturbing. Without spoiling anything, there’s a near-death moment that’s one of the most vivid and impactful that we’ve seen.
Sands, full of lesion-like bedsores, writhes in pain and as he jerks and rises with gasps of breaths, super-imposed over this moment is a flock of crows suddenly flying in unison from their tree perches. This expressionistic metaphor is revealed later, but even on its own it’s majestic how it conveys the very life slowly leaving his body. The film is full of tremendous and unforgettable moment of cinema creativity.
The brilliant centerpiece of the film however, is an astonishing uncut 22-minute back and forth between Sands (Fassbender in a stellar and unforgettable performance) and a priest (a remarkable Liam Cunningham) where the two essentially barter, argue and battle over Sands’ plan to starve himself to demonstrate and prove the will of the IRA is not weak.
“Hunger” reaped awards wherever it went. It won the Discovery prize at the Toronto International Film Festival, the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer (director McQueen) and also took the Gucci prize at the Venice Film Festival among many other plaudits and nominations. It’s a visually powerful film from an excellent new voice in filmmaking and its worth taking the time to go out and seek. [A]