By Andy Ford
Steve McQueen’s powerful film, Hunger, set at the time of the IRA hunger strikes of 1981, is showing on Film 4 and is available on catch-up.
Set in the notorious H-Blocks in Belfast’s Maze prison the film is an unswerving look at the effects of prison brutality meted out by the guards, to attack the prisoners’ campaign for political status, but also the effect on the guards themselves of having to engage in such brutality. Both parties are shown to be dehumanised by the prison regime.
The film starts from the point of view of one of the guards, showing his daily life, fear of assassination, and the toll the job takes on him. It then switches to follow and young republican prisoner as he is brought into the prison, stripped, beaten and placed in a filthy cell. The visual impact is heightened by the virtual absence of spoken dialogue for the first 15 minutes of the film.
Hunger is famous for a powerful extended 17-minute single camera shot which covers the conversation between Bobby Sands (played outstandingly by Michael Fassbender) and a priest (Liam Cunningham) as they debate the morality and effectiveness of the tactic of the hunger strike. This was also a debate in the labour movement at the time. McQueen chose to have the film written by an Irish playwright, Enda Walsh, instead of a normal scriptwriter, and it shows in the verbal interplay of this exchange. In fact, the scene was so difficult that Fassbinder and Cunningham rehearsed it ten or twelve times a day in the run-up to filming. The debate achieves the feat of being just as dramatic as the hyper-real and disturbing scenes of prison brutality and resistance.
The strength of Bobby Sands’ belief comes through in this intense discussion and helps to explain how it was that he was elected from his prison cell to parliament in April 1981 as the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, before this death as a result of the hunger strike. This was a defining moment in the evolution of Sinn Fein, leading ultimately to the Good Friday Agreement which continues to define life in Northern Ireland to this day.
McQueen’s other films, Shame and 12 Years a Slave have also been on Film 4 and should be available on catch up. His new film Widows is due for release soon.
November 13th, 2018
