Hunger

I got to see Hunger at the Cork Film Festival, but didn’t get a chance to post my review until now. I didn’t know much about the film before going, but there was a sense of excitement about the film, loads of people trying to get tickets to it, loads of people telling me if you go see one film in the festival, go see this one.

It seemed the film had shown in other film festivals to great critical acclaim, in fact I found out afterward it has already won two awards and by all accounts was very well received at Cannes.

Hunger attempts to show the last six weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, a republican who died while on hunger strike in ‘The Maze’ prison. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Bobby Sands story apart from that so I looked forward to at least learning a little more.

The film was the feature debut of Steve McQueen, a well known video artist, and was co-written with Enda Walsh who is best known as a playwrite (he wrote Disco Pigs).

As the film opened I was really excited, it was an incredibly assured opening scene, one which built incredible tension as we watched a man eat his breakfast and prepare to leave his house for work. We watch in silence as, his apprehension and resignation apparent, he eats his toast before routinely surveying his neighbourhood, inspecting his car for suspect devices and finally turning the key in the ignition.

The uneasy tone for the film was set in a beatifully simple but incredibly effective way.

The film progresses with the processing of a new republican prisoner, and his experience being thrust into a cell with a fellow republican on dirty protest. We are shown life in The Maze through short glimpses at various times, snippets of conversations, episodes of violence, moments of intimacy and moments of resolute defiance.

However, while there is no denying that Hunger shows incredible filmmaking ability, it fails to really engage with the exception of the opening scene. Perhaps the director intentionallly wanted to present the facts rather than give any or either side of the story – but we are left with no sympathy for any of the faces in the film, on either side of the bars in The Maze.

It is possible that those with a keen knowledge and sense of history with be fascinated at this glimpse into what it must have been like for those in The Maze at that time, but for the rest of us we are not given enough context or understanding of the situation to grasp the relevance of what we are seeing.

We do eventually get to meet Bobby Sands, but we never get to know him.

Sands is given one single opportunity to have his side of the story presented, McQueen gives him one scene where he informs a priest, played by Liam Cunningham, of his intention to go on Hunger Strike.

The scene is bravely shot almost entirely in one single and static take, which might have worked if the delivery had been exceptional, but unfortunately it played like a first reading of the script.

McQueen had a whole film to explore Sands and his motivations, but instead decided to shoehorn them into one badly presented scene before getting on with the gory details of starvation.

Here is a man who starved himself to death for his beliefs, for his faith, for his cause. What is interesting about a man who starves himself to death is surely the why of it and not the how, and yet once Steve McQueen really gets Bobby Sands into the film he seems obsessed only with the details of what physically happens to a man who starves himself to death.

Not only that, but having spent most of the film creating this awful sense of gritty realness, toward the end the film he descends into mawkish sentimentalism by employing incredibly clichéd film devices more suited to films like ‘Into The West’.

When you compare Hunger to a film like ‘In The Name of the Father’ you can indeed appreciate the visceral and almost tangible reality created by McQueen, but you will miss the passion and the commitment Daniel Day Lewis was able to bring to his role through his delivery of that script.

That is not to belittle Michael Fassbender, playing Sands, who seemed like a man more than able to deliver the goods if he had been afforded the opportunity by the script and direction.

If you want to watch a man die of self inflicted starvation in violent and filthy surroundings, then this is the film for you. If you want to know anything about Bobby Sands read a book.

I felt the response at the film festival was mixed, ranging from the scattering of people who gave it a standing ovation, to those who couldn’t get out fast enough when the credits began to roll. I’d be interested to hear what anyone else thought of it. Comments welcomed…