Steve McQueen’s Hunger

Screens : Sat Sep 27: Noon and Sun Sep 28: 6:15

The title to this post may be cheesy, but Steve McQueen’s Hunger is anything but.    A renowned film and video artist, known for his installations, Steve McQueen makes his feature film debut with an unconventional look at the hunger strike IRA activist Bobby Sands went on in 1981.   I haven’t seen everything at this years NYFF and I can’t say it is my favorite of this years crop, but thus far this is the film that has stuck with me the most.

The film opens without any mention of Bobby Sands and proceeds to present a striking portrait of masculinity, power and prison politics.   We got very little exposition and proceed to see people, their surroundings and what happens when they make decisions.   A man cleans his knuckle wounds, eats his breakfast, checks his car for a bomb and beats people in the prison he works in.   A new man enters the prison, refuses a uniform, strips down to nothing, comes to terms with his new life and smears his shit on the walls of his prison stall.   Another man is thrown from his cell, beaten, cleaned and has his hair cut. The images are quick, vibrant and almost mathematical.

Michael Fassbender in Hunger

The film switches gears as one of the men we have followed sits with a priest and have a 20+ minute discussion about what it would mean to go on a hunger strike.   From here we follow Bobby Sands as he stops eating. This is a film about a political moment and sans the ending title cards it achieves the urgency of the specific moment of Bobby Sands.    Part of this is no doubt due to Michael Fassbender’s performance as Bobby Sands.   When we meet him, he is tough and determined.   When we leave him, he is a skeleton but nonetheless determined. His eyes speak volumes and the 20 minutes scene between he and Sands’ priest is something to be celebrated.

I’ve never been more capitaved or fell in love with a film that portrays such ugly things.   The way the images are put together define and elevate the physical nature of what we see - it’s visceral and hits you in your gut.   And while it may not be pretty, cinema that confronts you in that way, that knocks you down, is one of the reasons I am happy to be alive.

If you are in New York go see this film this weekend.   It does have a distributor but being that the film will probably play at the IFC Center when it gets that distribution and it is playing at the far superior Ziegfeld this weekend - I’d check it out now.

takepart to learn more about the political struggles of Bobby Sands.

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