Review: Hunger (2009) ****
English artist Steve McQueen’s first feature, Hunger, is an uncompromising, grim and intense piece of work that probes the 66 day hunger strike led by Bobby Sands to restore the political status of members of the IRA being held at The Maze prison in Northern Ireland in 1981.
Largely eschewing the highly charged politics behind the story, McQueen dances obliquely around his subject, first following a prison officer and then a freshly admitted prisoner before finally zeroing in on the story of Sands himself half way into the film. With long passages devoid of dialogue and musical cues used only sparingly, the result is a Bressonian sketch, both unsettlingly detailed and hypnotizingly abstract, showing the consequences of the conflict on both sides.
In a climate where the word “terrorism” is tossed around casually to drum up fear and inspire acquiescence to authority, Hunger is at times frustratingly apolitical, yet it’s impossible to watch without acknowledging our own recent experiences in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and the unique difficulty of punishing people who are fighting for a cause.
That’s the subtext of the story, but of primary interest to McQueen is Sands himself and his motivations for leading a fight that could end up in his own death. After a freely flowing, observant first half that charts the chamber of horrors of prison life for the IRA prisoners and their guards, Hunger snaps into focus during an intense, nearly 20-minute stretch of pure dialogue between Sands and a priest he has called in to listen to his plan. The camera never moves and the film is never cut in an exchange that begins banteringly as the two men size each other up, but quickly turns serious as Sands lays out his position. It’s a tough scene that comes as a surprise after the largely dialogue free first half. The Irish accents are sometimes hard for American ears to tease out, but the scene is the core to the film. With no action or cinematic tricks to fall back on, the film at this point is kept from feeling stagy purely by the performances of Michael Fassbender as Sands and Liam Cunningham as the priest. They’re the kinds of awards-worthy performances that never seem to win awards.
From there, the film jumps forward in stages as Sands’ body slowly deteriorates from lack of nutrition. His philosophical battle with the priest has turned into spiritual battle as he drifts in and out of consciousness and the past that made him the man he is rises up to meet him. It’s a life wasting away but far from wasted.
Hunger is grueling, hard to watch and not for the squeamish, but it’s ultimately a fascinating look at sacrifice and the human will to persevere. It’s troubling yet meditative and, in a way, oddly inspiring. It’s not always a pleasant ride, but it’s powerful and it gets better with repeated viewings.
Hunger. UK 2008 (US release 2009). Directed by Steve McQueen. Written by Steve McQueen and Enda Walsh. Cinematography by Sean Bobbitt. Music score composed by Leo Abrahams and David Holmes. Edited by Joe Walker. Starring Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Brian Milligan, Liam McMahon and Stuart Graham. 1 hour 32 minutes. Not rated by the MPAA. 4 stars (out of 5)
Filed under: Reviews
Tags: Brian Milligan, David Holmes, Enda Walsh, Hunger, Joe Walker, Leo Abrahams, Liam Cunningham, Liam McMahon, Michael Fassbender, Sean Bobbitt, Steve McQueen, Stuart Graham
I liked this movie too and found it to be something far more than I expected, but I did take issue with the lack of context at the beginning of the movie, which actually implies that the prisoners’ treatment was far worse than it actually was because the prisoners’ themselves had forsaken much of the basic human necessities that they were offered in the strikes preceding the events of the film. McQueen doesn’t give the audience this context, probably because he assumes audiences are intimately familiar with the Troubles, but American audiences will likely be flabbergasted by the conditions of the prison. I’m certain the prison was an awful place, but likely not as intentionally medieval as the film depicts.
But regardless of this lack of important context, it is still a very interesting film. Probably most compelling for me isn’t the hunger strike itself, but the relationship between the guards and prisoners, which McQueen dissects in an almost oblique manner at first before he begins to connect the dots of his fractured narrative. Violently adversarial yet emotionally tender at the same time, McQueen does an excellent job of contrasting the efficient, dehumanizing brutality of the prison crackdown with the subtle emotional turmoil and uncertainty that weighs down on the guards themselves. It’s a subplot to the film, and yet I could have watched McQueen spend the entire film on this perverse relationship because honestly, I found it more engrossing than Sands eventual hunger strike.
The long, near-unbroken conversation at the center of the film is riveting and impressively acted. Apparently it never happened in reality, but McQueen felt it was a powerful way to succinctly compact the long back-and-forth between Sands and his IRA handlers on the outside. No kidding, this is a bravura moment that should have garnered some awards on its own.
As disturbing and visceral as some of the imagery is, I found the movie to be beautiful to watch. There’s an incredible scene early in the movie (out of context) where a guard is trying to relax in the yard during a snowfall after a violent encounter with a prisoner. As the guard quietly smokes a cigarette, a light snow falls and flakes land on his hand and melt on camera. Beautiful moment captured on film, and there are many more in the movie.
Recommended, but not for the faint of heart.
Wonderful double review here, haha, from Craig and Joel!
I just saw this last night. I found the film fairly riveting, but then, at around the forty-five or fifty-minute mark, when that long scene between Fassbender and Cunningham, I thought the picture achieved something rarely seen today. That long, beautifully simple shot was where the film won me over for good. A gutsy aesthetic choice which I found to be beyond stagy–truly verite, allowing the actors to take over the film as they deserved to. Bravura is right.
The lack of context bugged me the first time too Joel, but second viewings I just kind of let it go. In the end McQueen wasn’t so much making a film about The Troubles as he was meditating on human nature. I think it’s pretty clear with whom his sympathies lie, but his message was elsewhere.
The first time through “the big scene” was lost on me. I was tired. Frazzled. Wasn’t even sure we were finally watching the main character and the accents killed me. Even the third time through I kept having to replay snatches of conversation. But damn. That is also where the movie clicked for me and went from something interesting to something kind of amazing.
**spoilers***
His final passage toward death reminded me of Dave Bowman’s journey in 2001. Partly because of its disjointedness, partly because of all the white and partly because eventually everything in my head eventually traces back to Kubrick somehow. I’m not saying it means anything, I’m just saying.
I’d have to see it again to have a stronger opinion on this, but I think the first half of the film (including the conversation) is pretty strongly weighed down in The Troubles and the issues of the Maze prison from that time period, so I think McQueen owes his audience a little bit of context. McQueen has a POV and a political leaning on this, even if in interviews he’s speaking to the contrary on that.
The second half of the film, which chronicles Sands’ strike, is more what I think you’re describing for me and loses the weight and charged imagery of the first half.
I completely agree that Sands is heavily influenced by Kubrick throughout, from his visual compositions to his editing to the production design. I couldn’t help mentally referencing 2001, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket as I watched this, but McQueen definitely has his own style that he’s drawing from. Quite an achievement for a first-time director.
Need to see it. Will probably check it out this weekend or next.
Excellent review. This is the first time I’ve actually wanted to see the film–before it just sounded kinda abstractly intense and self-important, but this leads me to think there’s a lot of good stuff in there. I’ve only heard good things about Fassbinder’s performance. The relevance you cite to today’s terrorist activities is not something that had occurred to me, but I can see where that would be particularly striking.
Interesting insights by Joel, as well.
After watching it again, the first half became more for me about the limits of human resistance. There’s the Thatcher voice over, but then there’s the prison officer getting up in the morning and having to look under his car for a bomb and the general sense that he’s slowly having a melt down.
I don’t know though, once you see a film enough times, they seem to get more abstracty.
Thanks Jennybee. I hope you catch it and like it. As I keep saying, it took me a couple viewings to really warm up to it, but then I’m sometimes slow that way.