Hunger is turner prize winner, Steve McQueen’s telling of the 1981 hunger strikes from inside the Maze prison.

A FILM BY STEVE McQUEEN
 
 
STARRING: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Brian Milligan, Liam McMahon
WRITTEN BY: Steve McQueen and Enda Walsh
Original music by David Holmes
 

Release date: October 31, 2008
Certificate: 15a / 15
Running time: 96 minutes

We are approaching a time when violence and hatred are not commonplace in Northern Ireland. Murals are being retouched, bridges are being built and power is being shared. It won’t be too long before the only physical evidence of the troubles are the tattoos on people’s knuckles. Hunger brings us back to 1981, when things weren’t so rosy in the garden. It tells the story of the Maze Prison around the time of the hunger strikes that saw ten men, including Bobby Sands, loose their lives in an attempt to gain status as political prisoners.

This is the first film by Steve McQueen and he has set the bar incredibly high for himself (and everyone else). It is an absolute masterpiece. This is what cinema was invented for. McQueen usually makes money as an artist and this is reflected in his work. Dialogue is sparse (almost non-existent for the first fifteen minutes), as McQueeen tells his story through pictures.

The movie opens with a few short lines of text to educate the uninitiated and then launches into a visual narrative. Raymond Lohan is preparing for work. We are not told he is a protestant, we learn it from the clews that are slowly fed to us. The place mats in his house have pictures of shipyards, he uses a napkin to eat a fry, and finally in case you were in any doubt he has union jack keyring. We know that violence is an every day part of his life by the cuts on his knuckles and the way he checks for a bomb before driving to work – in the Maze.

After fifteen minutes in the life of Raymond, the audience gets inducted into the prison alongside Davey Gillen, who is starting a six year sentence. We spend the next fifteen minutes learning the ins and outs of life in the Maze through Davey. It is a quarter hour onslaught of indignity from the moment in he strips out of his civilian clothes to the moment he recieves a full body search. We get an insight pisoners’ tricks to get around the system , messages are passed during visits and a reciever is used to turn the bars of Davey’s cell into a radio.

McQueen resists the temptation to dive right into the Bobby Sands story. After a half hour of learning about the everyday life of the prison, we are introduced to its most influential inhabitant as he struggles against the gaurds who beat him as they cut his hair. It is an explosive introduction for the viewer. Bobby is expertly played by Michael Fassbender, who is thoroughly convincing both in the scenes where he is delivering dialogue, and then his physical portrayal of Sands as he starves himself to death. Fassbender is not only a talented actor, he is dedicated. He lost 14 kilos during a three month gap in filming to make him look like a person who hadn’t eaten for 66 days.

As brilliant as Fassbender is, it is McQueen who emerges as a real genius. He balances sublety and explicitness perfectly. When Davey is admitted, he is beaten. We don’t see the beating, we just see the resulting wounds. He is an artist and so you wouldn’t expect sound to be used as well as it is.Conversations echo around the small rooms. Most of the scenes are quiet but when a riot does kick off, the noises gush out of the speakers. It is not just the white noise of a crowd that most films would use. Every shout, every scream, every crack of batton is heard.

McQueen colaborated with Enda Walsh(Disco Pigs) for the screen play, and it is a colaboration that has worked. Dialogue is in short supply at the beginning of the film and again towards the end. The majority of the dialogue comes in one scene where Bobby explains to Fr. Dominic Moran that is planning the hunger strike. The writers don’t just launch into rhetoric. The two characters get to know each other through some light hearted banter. Then Bobby drops the bomb and the tone darkens. Fr. Moran questions Bobby’s motives. Has prison life made him suicidal or is he just desparate for glory? Bobby’s rebutal is  magnificantly delivered by Fassbender, and leaves the viewer in no doubt as to his motives.

McQueen shows great restraint with his subject matter. There must have been a temptation to tell the whole story surrounding the strikes, the lead up, the fall out, Bobby Sands being voted into parliament. None of this makes it into the movie. A few lines of text text at beginning and end of the movie, and two audio speeches by Maggie Thatcher are the only offers of cultural reference from the director. Besides a few scenes involving Raymond Lohan, the whole movie takes place inside the prison.

Prison movies in general aren’t pleasant, but the dirty and blanket protests make this one especially shocking. If you’re are offended by the sight of crap then this might not be for you, because the walls are literally painted with the stuff. If you can’t handle male nudity this could be problem as well, because this flick is mickey central. Also if you’re squeamish about blood, puss or vomit be warned that watching a man starve himself to death aint prettey.

If you are desensitised to all of these things you will be rewarded with the beauty that lies beneath.