Given the style and flat-out force of first-time writer/director Steve McQueen's Hunger, the urge I felt to turn out an extensive, scene-by- scene discussion was great. Films this well conceived just don't come around often enough yet I have neither the time nor word count to write such a piece, so here's the rub on Mcqueen's debut feature in...well...relative brief: it's a brutal and fragmented prison drama with art-house undertones. A bleak and unflinching true tale with a three-part structure that depicts what took place in Northern Ireland's infamous Maze Prison back in 1981 when
(1) a block of flouting IRA captives staged a shocking blanket and no-wash protest in hope of obtaining POW status, (2) an on-edge prison guard and his colleagues beat and abused the insurgents silly and (3) protest chief Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) led a perilous hunger strike.
You may've gathered that the film's title is something of a double entendre, then. But how good is Hunger? The answer is simple; 'very'. In fact, I have no hesitation what so ever in branding it a masterpiece. This is a film that'll knock the breath clean from your lungs. Not because it makes Posh Spice look like a half-ton mum. Not because it makes Shawshank look like Disney Land. But because it's an extraordinarily grim yet breathtakingly brilliant blend of the harsh realities and nightmarish-like cogs in this stain on modern British history. A vision that's realised so vividly by Steve Mcqueen who is so assured, so meticulous yet fearless in both his filmmaking and direction that an array of emotions are invoked throughout the course of his somewhat impartial treatise on human spirit: anger, disgust, pity, shock, doubt, confusion, nausea, sorrow, respect- you name it, you'll feel it.
Hunger isn't what you would call 'easy viewing', then, and it will divide viewers on the grounds of both its subject matter and imagery but so did the likes of say The Passion of the Christ, Fight Club, The Exorcist, A Clockwork Orange and Irreversible- all divisive, all effective, all triumphs. So I guess Hunger's just another case of 'cinematic marmite'- Mcqueen leaves little room for a middle ground. You'll either love this one or hate it. I mean, one scene shows a janitor sweeping pee and bleach towards the camera for 2 minutes. Another shows an inmate smearing his own sht into the wall, a third: someone jet- blasting it off. Shall I go on? No? OK, I'll stop, but expect no such mercy from Mcqueen who pulls no punches in his portrayal of both the jailed and the jailers. How true to the facts he is in his depiction may never be known but Hunger still looks and feels excruciatingly real. Almost too real: Mcqueen shoots with unflinching clarity and class. The scene where we're first introduced to Bobby Sands as he's hauled out of his cell for a wash is so viciously lifelike that you can virtually feel the blows inflicted on his body. These kind of scenes really infiltrate the film and are incensed by yet somewhat neutralised in the more drawn out, dream-like sequences. Mcqueen adopts a thorny, staccato like approach to storytelling that finds a kind of bent cohesion in Joe Walker's delicate editing.
It would also appear evident that the first-time director doesn't consider neither an omnipresent score nor a large amount of dialogue necessary. And why should he!? Actions speak louder than words, or so the saying goes, yet some verbal explanation is needed after 40 minutes or so of pure unpleasant imagery and a vindication, of sorts, arrives a bit belated but in some style: a single, 18 minute stationary shot of Sands and a republican Priest (Liam Cunningham) discussing the sense and morality behind the impending hunger strike. This, for me, is the film's as well as Fassbender's crowning moment. It is in this scene that we learn all we really need to know about Sands- the flawed revolutionary and Sands- the man (what follows is one of the single most finales I've ever seen in cinema). Like the rigid Priest, you too have to question Sands' sanity and judgement considering what he and his fellow prisoners have been through. The sheer intensity of their fortitude cannot be ignored, though.
That said, Hunger doesn't really force us into taking sides. It doesn't ask "Hey, who do you think was in the wrong?" No. If there's a question the film throws up it's "in the end, did it really matter!?" Mcqueen doesn't glorify the IRA. He doesn't back Thatcher's Britain nor does he render Bobby Sands a martyr. He simply shows that when an unyielding spirit meets an immovable object, when one man's right meets another man's wrong, when doctrines dissolve into all out war, people will die: lunacy will, in time, prevail and there will be no gain, only casualties.
Hunger is a film of such terrible beauty that you will sometimes struggle to look at and away from. Much has and will continue to be said about Michael Fassbender's intense and unwavering turn as the skeletal Sands but he's no more than a hefty stroke on director Steve McQueen's visionary- grey, green and bleak house canvas. Is it art? If not, it's what art should be. The fact that this is Mcqueen's first film will leave you reeling. You have to see this.
You may've gathered that the film's title is something of a double entendre, then. But how good is Hunger? The answer is simple; 'very'. In fact, I have no hesitation what so ever in branding it a masterpiece. This is a film that'll knock the breath clean from your lungs. Not because it makes Posh Spice look like a half-ton mum. Not because it makes Shawshank look like Disney Land. But because it's an extraordinarily grim yet breathtakingly brilliant blend of the harsh realities and nightmarish-like cogs in this stain on modern British history. A vision that's realised so vividly by Steve Mcqueen who is so assured, so meticulous yet fearless in both his filmmaking and direction that an array of emotions are invoked throughout the course of his somewhat impartial treatise on human spirit: anger, disgust, pity, shock, doubt, confusion, nausea, sorrow, respect- you name it, you'll feel it.
Hunger isn't what you would call 'easy viewing', then, and it will divide viewers on the grounds of both its subject matter and imagery but so did the likes of say The Passion of the Christ, Fight Club, The Exorcist, A Clockwork Orange and Irreversible- all divisive, all effective, all triumphs. So I guess Hunger's just another case of 'cinematic marmite'- Mcqueen leaves little room for a middle ground. You'll either love this one or hate it. I mean, one scene shows a janitor sweeping pee and bleach towards the camera for 2 minutes. Another shows an inmate smearing his own sht into the wall, a third: someone jet- blasting it off. Shall I go on? No? OK, I'll stop, but expect no such mercy from Mcqueen who pulls no punches in his portrayal of both the jailed and the jailers. How true to the facts he is in his depiction may never be known but Hunger still looks and feels excruciatingly real. Almost too real: Mcqueen shoots with unflinching clarity and class. The scene where we're first introduced to Bobby Sands as he's hauled out of his cell for a wash is so viciously lifelike that you can virtually feel the blows inflicted on his body. These kind of scenes really infiltrate the film and are incensed by yet somewhat neutralised in the more drawn out, dream-like sequences. Mcqueen adopts a thorny, staccato like approach to storytelling that finds a kind of bent cohesion in Joe Walker's delicate editing.
It would also appear evident that the first-time director doesn't consider neither an omnipresent score nor a large amount of dialogue necessary. And why should he!? Actions speak louder than words, or so the saying goes, yet some verbal explanation is needed after 40 minutes or so of pure unpleasant imagery and a vindication, of sorts, arrives a bit belated but in some style: a single, 18 minute stationary shot of Sands and a republican Priest (Liam Cunningham) discussing the sense and morality behind the impending hunger strike. This, for me, is the film's as well as Fassbender's crowning moment. It is in this scene that we learn all we really need to know about Sands- the flawed revolutionary and Sands- the man (what follows is one of the single most finales I've ever seen in cinema). Like the rigid Priest, you too have to question Sands' sanity and judgement considering what he and his fellow prisoners have been through. The sheer intensity of their fortitude cannot be ignored, though.
That said, Hunger doesn't really force us into taking sides. It doesn't ask "Hey, who do you think was in the wrong?" No. If there's a question the film throws up it's "in the end, did it really matter!?" Mcqueen doesn't glorify the IRA. He doesn't back Thatcher's Britain nor does he render Bobby Sands a martyr. He simply shows that when an unyielding spirit meets an immovable object, when one man's right meets another man's wrong, when doctrines dissolve into all out war, people will die: lunacy will, in time, prevail and there will be no gain, only casualties.
Hunger is a film of such terrible beauty that you will sometimes struggle to look at and away from. Much has and will continue to be said about Michael Fassbender's intense and unwavering turn as the skeletal Sands but he's no more than a hefty stroke on director Steve McQueen's visionary- grey, green and bleak house canvas. Is it art? If not, it's what art should be. The fact that this is Mcqueen's first film will leave you reeling. You have to see this.