Hunger

Writer/director Steve McQueen's debut feature is a sure to be controversial spell-binder portraying, in very vivid and visceral detail, the IRA hunger strike led by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) from within prison walls in 1981. Sands was one of 10 men who died in the strike, which was designed to encourage the British to grant political status for IRA members who performed acts of violence in the name of their cause. The efforts, according to the film, were significantly successful. The British ultimately granted most of the IRA's requests, though they still refused to cave on the issue of political status.

The film opens very ambiguously with unsubstantiated shots of an unidentified figure going about his daily routine, as what seems to be some kind of law enforcement officer. Next we meet a resilient prisoner being forced into his grimy cell, the condition of which is unsettling and grotesque. The film is his momentarily until we ultimately meet the former male character again, and discover him to be a prison guard who brutally "baths" and "grooms" the prisoners. He is abusing an unknown man, the identity of which we will come to learn is Bobby Sands. Sands does not occupy the film's central narrative until more than 30 minutes into its 90 minute run. It is a wholly unconventional device for a film that is essentially a narrow window biopic, but many of McQueen's choices here are deliberately untraditional and artistic in nature. The most blatant of these is a reportedly recording breaking 17.5 minute shot, the longest in cinema. It appears during a confrontation between Sands and a Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) and is essentially a rundown of the talking points for the IRA's strike initiative. It is the only strong dialogue scene in a mostly silent, visually oriented feature. It's sustained wide-take is more suggestive of a theater performance whereas elsewhere McQueen exploits the visual versatility of cinema to express the inexpressible within his characters, stoic men on a mission of dire consequence.

What Hunger says about Sands as a historical figure could be debated, but what's most satisfying about it is its portrayal, not of this historical moment, but of a human condition that is perpetual and always present. The collision of opposite minds, the reduction of intellectual ideals to violent action, and most prominently the degradation of a prisoner by his captor. Sands is a captivating figure, though not neccarily a likable one. In the end, his physical struggle as he nears starvation turns into an act of awing will, but to sympathize with his pain is not the same as sympathizing with his cause, or even agreeing with his methods. It simply cannot be denied that to watch a man die slowly in the name of a belief, no matter who he may be or what he has done, is a terribly uncomfortable and dark experience rife with reflections on human mortality and the value of one's life. It is a powerful and unique story, and would still be, even if told in allegorical fiction.

Detractors and those sensitive to Sands' legacy are likely to take offense to McQueen's nonjudgmental portrait. It seems a preferential choice to open the story in prison, where we see these men as beaten victims suffering for a belief, and are not shown the violence they perpetrated, however motivated, that led them into these lives. The most egregious act of violence, though, is perpetrated outside the prison walls, presumably by an IRA gunman, and it could be argued such a moment offers counterbalance. It is truly the most shocking and unspeakable cinema assassination I can ever recall seeing. It is understood that these men have committed terrible acts, and in his dialogue with Father Moran, Bobby Sands seems to convey as much of himself, but I think what McQueen is driving at beneath all of this violence and torment is not a pro-IRA justification of Sands and his actions, but instead a reverence for human life, so easily dismissed by these prisoners and the guards who abuse them. No one in this world is better than another. They are all vicious and the universality of this viciousness makes it all the more difficult to stand. Sands has long been debated as a political activist or a terrorist, whichever your stance might be. But McQueen suggests that all people can be read in two ways and that no person would much stand up to over-analysis of their character, particularly in such terse circumstances. In that long debate with Father Moran, Bobby Sands suggests that people like Moran need people like him because he makes life real rather than theoretical and philosophical. And in real life, no one is a hero.

Grade: A