Hunger part 1

Film: Hunger
Directed by Steve McQueen
Ireland/UK (2008)
Prison Drama/Political Drama
10 parts/90 mins

In Irish English with optional English subtitles (default)
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(WARNING: film contains adult language, violence, and nudity. Rated R MPAA)

Synopsis:

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. 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.

Review:

One doubts that any feature film could more maturely, passionately, or elegantly evoke the madness and confusion at the heart of the early-'80s IRA conflict than Irish director Steve McQueen's harrowing docudrama Hunger. The deepest truths and insights into McQueen's perspective arrive in an opening sequence, when we observe a British prison employee, Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham) gazing at himself in the mirror, with a weathered and disillusioned face. Lohan's deep-set, slightly pained eyes aren't eyes that lack a conscience, and his countenance will return to haunt our memories time and again throughout this picture -- likewise, his routine ritual of plunging his bloody, skinned knuckles into warm water to ease the pain. Lohan may be an administrator of brutality but his ability to suffer makes him more human in our eyes -- as does his decision to take flowers to his catatonic mother.

Our feelings toward the IRA remain equally balanced; not long after we witness the psychotically violent, perhaps fatal beating of an IRA prisoner, McQueen interpolates an appalling, sickening act of violence from an IRA terrorist that redefines one's notion of shocking. It comes out of nowhere, unfolds in the sweetest and most benign of locations, and ends with the gunman practically jaunting away merrily, hands in his pockets. The central message is clear: the men on both sides of this fence are neither monsters nor saints. Both the guards and the suffering prisoners have been irrevocably plunged by fate into the same maelstrom of suffering.

Curiously, for a drama about the IRA, the first half of the film completely omits ideological argument and an exploration of the political goings-on at the core of this tumult. And that represents a deliberate choice. For the humanistic McQueen, everything within the prison represents complete insanity. At the heart of everything, the director reminds us, these men are men, who belong to the same human quilt, and the groups have mutually resigned themselves to the same pit of despair and masochism -- making all external conflicts irrelevant when held up next to the film's gut-wrenching plea for sympathy.

Category:

Film & Animation

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[TheAlexander56]

THANK YOU

[stoptherot1]

why is that when everybdy goes to bed in the house, they leave the bloody tv on?

[NoRosesForMe]

@sav6036 celebrate her death that is.....sorry...drinkin.....i shouldnt be watchin this right now......stirs me up......and i got pasta coookin shit haha ,,,,she can rot in hell with her limey cohorts....ok.....*ahem* ...im shuttin up now.

(i dont get political from this channel of mine......just the other one haha xx)

[NoRosesForMe]

@sav6036 ill certainly celebrate. Fkn murderin bitch

[stoptherot1]

@fookinusername I was talking about in my house. Whilst I am still very much awake and not requiring the idiot box on. They leave it nattering to it's bloody self with shit loads of brainwashing nosense. I HATE TV

[fookinusername]

@stoptherot1 so they dont get robbed at night - make burglars think your still awake - what fricking sheltered part of the world did you grow up in?

[m10690d]

@sav6036 stop smoking crack you wierdo

[lotte781]

@sav6036 ????!!!???? What????!!!????