By Faris Tanyos for KDRV
 
February 4, 2010
 
Grade: A+
 
Steve McQueen's Hunger is tough; brutally tough. It grinds on you.
 
I don't know how else to put it.
 
It is unnerving, hard to watch, hard to stomach.
 
I hesitate to say it's not for everybody... It is, because the subject matter is so urgent, and not just to the UK, not just because it's a seminal event in Northern Ireland's history. From a filmmaking perspective, it is so clinically executed... machinelike...
 
This has to be seen; regardless of how unpleasant the viewing experience may be... and trust me, it's unpleasant. I'm sorry, this isn't high art that can be avoided (A Clockwork Orange).
 
The crux of the film rests on an absolutely stunning single shot that runs a breathtaking 17-and-a-half minutes, allegedly, the longest single shot ever put on film. There's precious little conversation in Hunger, and 97 percent of it comes in this scene.
 
In it, Paramilitary Prisoner Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) explains to Father Moran (Liam Cunningham), a Belfast Catholic priest, why he's about to undertake a hunger strike. Unlike a failed attempt the year before, Sands is certain this one will work. He will start his strike, and the 75 prisoners who've signed up to join him will follow, at staggered two week intervals, until their demands are met.
 
Moran is unconvinced, angered and disgusted with what he calls a suicide attempt. He accuses Sands of being locked up so long in the Maze that he's lost touch with reality; maybe he's trying to be martyr: "You start a hunger strike to protest what you believe in. You don't start already determined to die."
 
The 1981 Irish Hunger Strike was against the loss of what was known as Special Category Status, under which Irish Republican paramilitary prisoners convicted of terrorist crimes were given political status, similar to prisoners of war, and hence, had certain POW privileges. The strikers had Five Demands: They included not having to wear prison uniforms or do prison work, the right to associate freely with other prisoners and the right to one visit, letter and parcel per week.
 
The British Government granted SCS in a deal with the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1972. In 1976, it ended it. From then on, those convicted of terrorist crimes would be treated like ordinary criminals. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who took power in '75, repeatedly refused to reinstate SCS.
 
In response, many paramilitary prisoners housed in Northern Ireland's Long Kesh (Maze Prison) took part in a ‘blanket' protest in which they refused to wear prison uniforms. Instead, they were given nothing but a blanket. Eventually, they added a ‘no wash' protest, in which they covered the walls of their cells in s---, refused to shower or shave or leave their cells.
 
Most of Hunger takes place in the confines of the Maze. It's shown to us through the eyes of four men: Sands, cell mates Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) and Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon) and Prison Officer Ray Lohan (Stuart Graham).
 
It tells us nothing about their background or the nature of their crimes. Gillen, we're told, is serving a six-year sentence, Campbell 12. When Gillen first comes to the prison, he strips, is given a blanket and taken to his loathsome cell, which has no furniture and is covered wall-to-wall in excrement.
 
We see Lohan, nursing a bloodied hand, preparing to go to work by checking his car and front yard for explosives.
 
The day-to-day routine is presented matter-of-factly, accompanied by little dialogue or explanation. We know nothing of the outside world. The prisoners and their girlfriends and families slip messages or homemade radios to each other during visits by hiding them in bodily orifices. The only time the prisoners interact is during Mass. They use the Bible's paper to roll makeshift cigarettes. "I only smoke Lamentations," Sands jokes with Father Moran.
 
In a harrowing scene, a riot team is brought in to line the prison hallway as the men are dragged, one by one, naked out of their cells, hit with batons, kicked and beaten, before being thrown into a bath, then held down while their hair and beards are cut, their orifices examined, and some poor bloke in a sanitation suit goes into each cell and sprays it down. We learn why Lohan has bloodied knuckles.
 
Towards the end of the film we hear a brief audio clip of Margaret Thatcher addressing the strike: "They've chosen what may well be their last card. They've turned their violence against themselves in the prison hunger strike to death. They seek to work on the most basic of human emotions, pity, as a means of creating tension and stroking the flames of bitterness and hatred."
 
A doctor explains in painful, excruciating detail to Sands' parents what is happening to their son: Gradual deterioration of the liver, bone density deficiency, impaired function, shrinkage of the heart's left ventricle, low blood sugar, low energy, muscular wasting, gastrointestinal ulcers, thinning of the intestinal wall, submucosal hemorrhaging, degenerative changes to the mucous membrane of the intestines and all the organs of the body...
 
We see it for ourselves. Fassbender went on a crash diet for this role. From the footage, I can't even begin to imagine what that entailed. For his sake, I hope the makeup artists were just that good.
 
Hunger is extraordinarily directed and acted. McQueen articulates the political issues without getting entrenched in them or making them the focal point of the film. Rather, he focuses on the prisoners actions, the lengths they take for their beliefs. He spends little time pontificating whether those beliefs justify their actions; that is a subject for another film. Hunger's one failure is not addressing what crimes these men committed. If we knew this, would it affect our sympathies? Are we not getting the full picture? Does Hunger oversimplify a very complex, political and cultural issue, or does it seek to tell a specific story from a specific perspective?
 
Whichever side of the fence you're on, whether you agree or disagree with what the strikers stood for; you can't help but come out of the film admiring their resolve. They were courageous.
 
Sands died after 66 days. It took nine more deaths to call off the strike: "My life is real, not a theological exercise," he told Father Moran.
 
ftanyos@kdrv.com