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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
HUNGER More than halfway through the film, a nearly 15-minute-long, single-take exchange between Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands and a Roman Catholic priest becomes one of the more intense scenes in an already wrenching film. The script, co-written by visual artist-turned-feature filmmaker Steve McQueen, seamlessly insinuates the issues surrounding Sands’s declaration to go on a hunger strike unless the British government relents and restores political status to him and other IRA members held in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. This scene should be taught in playwriting courses on how to introduce themes without killing the dramatic momentum. Up until this point, I was concerned that the surrounding issues would be largely left out—it’s rare for any film to discuss political strategy in detail. And the scene works in an entirely different way, as a respite in a nightmare that is excruciating to watch in what is essentially a war film confined in a prison, the frontline of the Troubles in 1981. Denied political status, the IRA prisoners aren’t allowed to wear their civilian clothes. Refusing to wear the prison garb, they strip naked, draped only in blankets. (They also, in protest, don’t bathe.) Confined to their cells, they have no weapons but their insanity, with only piss and excrement at their disposal. Closed off from the rest of the world, both prisoners and guards lose all sense of reality. There’s no explanation for the prisoners’ arrest and incarceration, which perhaps makes it easier for the audience to empathize with them. But their status within the film is a bit more complicated than virtuous warriors. (Comparing himself to Christ, Sands might come across as arrogant and self-righteous.) Throughout, he and the other IRA members are victims of police brutality, but in one of the film’s more shocking moments, a retaliatory IRA terrorist act serves as a reminder of the world outside the prison’s walls, and is as calculating as the brutality within the prison. There’s hardly any letup in the tension once the film begins, when Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), a prison officer, checks underneath his car in his suburban driveway before heading off to work. (His wife looks on from the front window.) When he turns the ignition and there’s no explosion, the sense of relief is palpable. From the start, the film avoids portraying the police as complete automatons. Collectively, they are like a mob, faceless abusers behind their anti-riot shields. Nevertheless, there are moments of disturbing reflections for Officer Lohan in between conducting tortuous interrogations, and for a rookie cop breaking down during a police free-for-all where naked prisoners are beaten almost to death. In this scene, among others, you will likely be concerned for the actors’ safety. Michael Fassbender as Sands, in particular, withers away in front of our eyes, his body convincingly decomposing while he starves to death; Sands died after fasting for 66 days. It’s only
in the last third when the film almost succumbs to conventional
storytelling. As he lays dying, Sands reflects on the life-changing
decision he made as a teenager (putting a dying foal out of its misery
when others were to afraid to act).
His fortitude gives him the motivation to continue starving himself, at
least as conceived by co-writer and playwright Enda Walsh. This
flashback, set in beautiful County Donegal, is the only time in the film
where the landscape comes alive, and grants Sands a moment of grace. In
contrast to what has preceded, it’s uplifting, making it possible to
come away from the film seeing Sands’s death as a tragic suicide or
Sands as a martyred hero. The film nudges more toward the latter
category. Kent Turner
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