Thursday, February 25, 2010

Hunger

Hunger (2008) - McQueen
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I have not seen a more powerful piece of filmmaking like this since perhaps Children of Men. Let's forget for a sec that Steve McQueen is a celebrated visual British artist. Let's set aside the fact many of the sequences are devastatingly beautiful. The year is 1981. It's Margaret Thacher's England- kids are getting shot in the head with plastic bullets by British troops in Northern Ireland. Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), an IRA commanding officer in Her Majesty's Maze Prison, decides to go on a second hunger strike to certain death, in protest of IRA prisoners being treated like common criminals. He dies of starvation after 66 days. 9 others follow suit.

It's a brutal film: starts out with feces, piss and blood and ends with a skeletal body, puss and bloody feces. Hunger opens with one of the prison guards with bloody knuckle preparing to leave for work, checking underneath his car for bombs, etc. It's a dehumanizing job and beating scenes are pretty brutal. The film is anchored by a powerful 20 minute uncut static wide shot between Sands and a priest (Liam McMahon) right in the middle. They talk about the pros and cons of starving oneself to death. The priest finds Sands a focused, immovable rock. The film has absolutely no sentimental moment and that is part of the strength along with its bea-u-gly cinematography. Fassbender's portrayal of man of conviction is quite astonishing. Whether you agree with IRA's tactics to achieve their political aim, one can't take away Sands' conviction in his beliefs. And that's beautiful.

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