 I'm happy to finally be bringing this back. It's been a while since I've talked about a criterion film, and we're going to talk about one that's pretty friggin' brutal. Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, this is my latest criterion collection order. The flash sale that happened a little while ago. I got a few movies for it to add to my Hall of Depression, which I'll have to talk about. Hunger was the directorial debut from Steve McQueen. Nope, not that one. This is the director who did films such as Shame and Twelve Years a Slave. This was the first one he did, and it talks about the IRA imprisonment during the IRA bombings, as well as the Margaret Thatcher era. While Steve McQueen tries to say this wasn't a political movie, it technically is because it talks about just the absolute barbarity that these prisoners went through, these political prisoners. First of all, they were revoked the status of political prisoners. Hell, they were revoked the status of almost being human beings. They were treated with such malice that tons of protest in Ireland, hunger strikes, the bashing the pots and pans for hours to try and get a resolution. The prisoners themselves tried different protests from being closed to blankets, and the guards took that advantage of more barbarity, and then in the end it was becoming an absolute animal house, with the IRA prisoners continually smearing their walls with feces. These guys are put into a room with no clothes, a single blanket, not even really mattresses if you can call that on the floor. There isn't even a toilet in these rooms. They literally have a shit corner. Not only that, they're also put into solitary confinement essentially unless there's a second person with them in there. But before you even get to the prison, it actually does start off on a different route that you would expect. And this kind of comes back to the comment about why Steve McQueen said this wasn't a political movie, because he does show the effect of this barbarism on both the prisoners and some of the guards. The film starts with a guard going out to his car, checking up and down the street, and then checking under his car to see if there's a bomb on it. And he again goes to the prison, which by the way you're also seeing cuts of his hands, like his hands are bruised and hurt and he keeps putting them in water. We see him go through a little bit of the day routine, but then there's also him standing outside having a cigarette. And it's in these opening minutes of the film that you're going to get the general gist of how this story is going to be told. It's a visual story. There's not really much dialogue in this film, except for one scene in particular, but a lot of this movie is a visually told story. When the guard is standing outside and having a cigarette, you're seeing him come down from the highs and the absolute emotional baggage that he has for what he's doing to these people. And it's only until about halfway through the film that we actually really get to meet Michael Fassbender. His character Bobby Sands appears about like 30 minutes into the movie, and then the story slowly shifts from just the prison life in general to about him and his eventual hunger strike in retaliation to the treatment that is being done to the prisoners. This film at its core is visually brutal from the art deco on a lot of the prison walls to how the prisoners are treated, to how those prisoners retaliate, to then how they are treated when it comes to the checks. They get a full body search, a cavity search, followed by a mouth search with the same gloves. To then Bobby Sands' body as he goes through his hunger strike, the body sores, the discoloration of his skin, his janky bones. While the movie might be short, director Steve McQueen pretty much keeps you invested in everything that is meant to be part of this story. There are two long shots in this film that are quite notable, the first one being the 13 minute take of Michael Fassbender and a priest talking at first about themselves, then about Ireland, and then about his proposed hunger strike and all the circumstances that have put Bobby into this situation to do this, and this is part of the prisoner's retaliation to what they do. They will take the urine and put it into a cup and then flow it out through the prison doors, and then comes the guard who first puts cleaning chemical all down the hallway, and then he comes back and then he pushes all of the urine down and sometimes back into the prisoner cells. That's all one shot, and that was the one that I was kind of surprised at that just kept going, but it's just showing the regular routine of what these prisoners would go through down to the very tidbit of them having their name tags removed from their prison walls before anything violent occurs to them. Hunger is a visually engaging film, both in terms of its brutality as well as what someone would go to in the attempt to try and right wrongs. And then those who might have come up in about how this film depicts the Irish, and especially the IRA, considering what was done to Britain and then Britain done back to Ireland, it's not really talking about that. It's just talking about how these people are being treated in this prison, how they were treated, and what they had to do to have something be changed about it. In the end, my review for Hunger is a 7 out of 7. This is a phenomenally heartbreaking film, but one that you need to see. It is incredibly gripping all the way from beginning to end, and it's actually one that you could almost watch over and over because one of how short it is, and two just the means and how it displays what happens to these prisoners. In the end, guys, I hope you enjoyed my review of Hunger. I'm going to put it back on my Hall of Despair, which I'll have to show you guys. I've got this kind of niche where like 90% of my criterion movies are sad. I'm going to put a link to my collection in the description below, and I rate all of the movies in that list on their sadness level. Tell me your guys' thoughts about Hunger. What did you think? What did you feel when you saw this film? Anyways, guys, that's all from me. Hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, leave a like, and if you're interested in more, subscribe. Otherwise, I'll see you guys next time.