The film’s subject is the 1981 Irish hunger strike, in which 10 members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) starved themselves to death in prison in protest of their treatment as common criminals, rather than prisoners of war. The hunger strike was one of the most disturbing events in the so-called “Troubles,” a period of political conflict between the British government and Northern Irish revolutionaries that started in the late 1960s. Even a quarter-century later, it is still a subject fraught with anger and tension and bitterness, thus McQueen’s visual strategies are perfectly aligned with the subject matter, which demands an approach that is resolutely physical, but also deeply humanistic. Hunger is a political film in that it is about the extremes of political conflict, but it never fully takes sides. McQueen, who cowrote the script with Irish playwright Enda Walsh, is insistent on seeing all the characters as humans, torn by their competing desires, impulses, and obligations.

The film achieves this primarily by structuring the narrative development along the paths of several different characters on opposing sides of the conflict, in particular Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), an IRA volunteer who led the hunger strike and, as a result, became a symbol of Irish repression, and Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), a largely silent guard at the prison where Sands and other IRA members are being held. When the film begins, IRA prisoners are in the midst of a so-called “dirty strike,” in which they refuse to wash themselves and smear the walls of their cells with excrement (one of the film’s most powerfully unnerving visual motifs is the way in which they make patterns on their cell walls, one of which is a perfectly formed vortex). The prisoners’ self-imposed filthy conditions are contrasted with Raymond’s neat and tidy suburban home and his fastidious nature, which would seem to establish a heavy-headed dichotomy, but is in fact little more than a set-up to undermine our expectations about taking sides. At various points in the film Raymond and other guards are involved in brutal violence against the prisoners, but McQueen shows that such activities are not always in line with their nature and that the guards live under the constant threat of violence themselves (one of the first things we see Raymond do is check under his car for a bomb before driving to work).

For all of its visual intensity and sharply etched moments of institutional violence, the centerpiece of Hunger is a 20-minute conversation between Sands and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham), which McQueen elected to shoot in intense long takes with a motionless camera. It’s a powerful sequence in which two ideologies come face to face, and it allows Sands (who is powerfully played by Fassbender) to justify his decision to start the hunger strike, something to which Father Moran is strongly opposed. It is a scene that could have easily become preachy or static, but McQueen turns it into a deeply felt and moving pivot point for the film, which allows us to understand, if not necessarily agree with, Sands’ decision, the physical ramifications of which dominate the film’s final 20 minutes. Watching him waste away is an excruciating experience, which only underscores the grueling, painful nature of his self-imposed death. Regardless of your political stance, it is impossible to deny the sheer willpower required to see such a protest through to the end, and even if McQueen allows himself to become a bit overly poetic in the final moments, Hunger remains a powerful tribute to the strength of human resolve.

Copyright ©2010 James Kendrick

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