Hunger provides plenty of food for thought

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

I sat slumped in my seat as the credits rolled for Hunger, feeling as though I had been repeatedly punched in the head by Mohammed Ali. It is a powerful, unrelenting film.

Light entertainment it isn’t. Nor is it party political, even though it’s about IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands, one of 10 men in Belfast’s Maze Prison who died as a way of pressing their demand for special category status for republican prisoners. You learn little about the republican struggle, or even about the ramifications of Sands' suicide.

Director Steve McQueen (the artist NOT the actor) says that growing up as a child in the 1980s he was influenced by three events: the Brixton riots, Tottenham winning the FA Cup and Sands. As an Arsenal fan, I give thanks that he didn’t choose the Cup final for his film debut. His stated aim with Hunger was to capture what it felt like to be in the Maze at that time. Certainly it seems like a gruellingly realistic portrayal of aspects of prison life – one of the most gruellingly realistic ever shown on film.

Because of the lack of political context, what hits the viewer is not so much the brutality of this particular prison regime, and of the British authorities behind it, but the brutality of prison in general. That’s what gives the film its power and why it resonates far beyond specific place and time.

The middle section consists of a 20-minute conversation between Sands and a priest, as they tussle verbally over their respective positions (“similar to the to-ing and fro-ing of a Jimmy Connors-John McEnroe Wimbledon tennis final or a Frazer-Ali fight”, says McQueen), and the final section is Sands’ physical deterioration and death. The wasting away is a tour de force of film-making but I found it the least compelling segment, perhaps because it is purely descriptive.

The intense, unrelenting focus on the protagonist and his immediate surroundings is vice-like: like the Ancient Mariner, it grabs your attention and won’t let go until the tale is finished. The only time the grip loosens is for a flashback sequence which offers up a (fictitious) youthful experience to illustrate an aspect of Sands’ character.

The citation for the inaugural Sydney Film Festival Prize spoke of the film’s "controlled clarity of vision, its extraordinary detail and bravery, the dedication of its cast and the power and resonance of its humanity." Though this is McQueen’s first full-length feature, his medium as an artist has always been film. He won the Turner Prize in 1999 and there are scenes in Hunger – notably, a long, slow take in which a warder methodically sweeps up urine that prisoners have tipped into the corridor from their cells – that could be submitted for the Turner Prize (and probably win).

In the wake of the hunger strike, the British government subsequently granted most of the prisoners’ demands. Was the protest worth 10 lives? That’s not the point McQueen is trying to make. “Steve has a unique perspective (as artists have done through hundreds of years) to show us a crucial moment in our history and enable us to think again about why it happened and what it achieved,” says executive producer Jan Younghusband.

“The film is impressionistic and not a discussion of facts or a debate about right and wrong, but more a meditation on a moment in time.

"Today there are different struggles to make the world better according to particular beliefs and lives continue to be affected.”