Review: Hunger

British artist Steve McQueen's directorial debut Hunger focuses on one of the darkest periods in Britain's recent history. When Irish republic activists were arrested en masse and staged a brutal protest campaign to make their imprisonment as costly, exhausting and embarrassing for the British government as humanly possible. The prisoners banged on walls, screamed all day, refused to bathe or use toilets and eventually went on hunger strikes that created a martyr out of a then 27 year old Bobby Sands (played by Inglourious Basterds' Michael Fassbender).

McQueen's background as a performance and video artist is expertly translated to screen -- cocooning a series of small, contrasting political screeds within images and juxtapositions that cannot be easily erased from the viewer's mind. Hunger contains many of the trappings of the historical biopic: the young police officer who considers himself apolitical, locking himself in bathroom stall and sobbing; a young protester recounting a story of getting into trouble as a kid that provided the foundation of his political ideology; Margaret Thatcher's defiant pronouncements filling the air anytime someone turns on a radio; an older, Protestant dead-ender now a prison doctor, whose cruel acts provide contrast to the young staffers all growing weary with concern and personal doubts as the hunger strikes begin to claim lives; and, much to my personal delight, the use of Buddhist imagery to underscore death.

Read the rest of this review at Greencine.com

Comments

[renc]

I think this is a great movie... When will this come out?

[Erin D.]

Much to my editor's chagrin, yes!

[Cathy]

Did you review this for St. Patrick's Day?