Unflinching, uncompromising, vivid and vital, Steve McQueen's challenging debut is not for the faint hearted, but it's still a richly rewarding retelling of troubled times.
Unflinching, uncompromising, vivid and vital, Steve McQueen's challenging debut is not for the faint hearted, but it's still a richly rewarding retelling of troubled times.
The final months of Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican Army activist who protested his treatment at the hands of British prison guards with a hunger strike, are chronicled in this historical drama, the first feature film from artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen. Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) is an IRA volunteer who is sentenced to Belfast's infamous Maze prison, where he shares a cell with fellow IRA member Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon). Like most of the IRA volunteers behind bars, Gillen and
Campbell are subjected to frequent violence by the guards, who in turn live with the constant threat of assassination at the hands of Republicans during their off-hours. Campbell and Gillen are taking part in a protest in which they and their fellow IRA inmates are refusing to wear standard prison-issue uniforms as a protest against Britain's refusal to recognize them as political prisoners, a move that is complicating their efforts to pass information among the other prisoners. As the protest fails to get results, one IRA member behind bars, Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), decides to take a different tack and begins a hunger strike, refusing to eat until Irish officials are willing to acknowledge the IRA as a legitimate political organization. However, while Sands' protest gains the attention both inside prison walls and in the international news, not everyone believes what he's doing is right, and Sands finds himself verbally sparring with a priest (Liam Cunningham) who questions the ethics and effectiveness of the strike. Hunger received its world premiere at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard program. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Midway through the movie there's an epic 24-minute scene...in the claustrophobic cell block the protesters have already internalized their cause so deeply that the world of words seems distant and inconsequential.
It's a strength of this carefully composed, almost obsessively controlled picture that it has no interest in the conventional biographical focus on a subject.
Hunger is not about the rights and wrongs of the British in Northern Ireland, but about inhumane prison conditions, the steeled determination of IRA members like Bobby Sands, and a rock and a hard place.
Hunger -- the disturbing, provocative, brilliant feature debut from British director Steve McQueen -- does for modern film what Caravaggio did to Renaissance painting.
Hunger will leave you feeling emotionally battered and bruised -- yet emerging from the cinema a stronger person for having witnessed such a beautiful and brutal film.
Politically, Bobby Sands' suicide meant nothing, but it illustrated poisonous lengths to which someone would go in protecting the only reality he ever knew. This is terrorism's pox, and why the Troubles - though stabilized - still bear the scars of shame.
A poetic, almost abstract take on very real, tangible material -- a fitting artistic approach to a surreal, extreme experience most human beings will not have on their own.
A powerful and stirring debut film. An exquisite exercise in atmosphere. Fassbender's dedication is stunning. While I would have liked to know more about what made Bobby Sands do the things that he did rather than just seeing his final days, I cannot fault the film too much. I'm excited to see where McQueen goes from
here. I have a feeling he will become a very heavy hitter.
February 15, 2011
Reid Volk
Super Reviewer
Hunger is a vivid and brilliant archetype of determination with a political purpose, chronicling the life of Bobby Sands, "leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status." Significant and motivated, Hunger is a self-inflicted brutal proposal
of the uncompromising human spirit underlined by a brilliant performance by Michael Fassbender.
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