Hunger

Steve McQueen
2008

Amusingly named first-time director Steve McQueen's arthouse darling has garnered plenty of critical acclaim for it's viscerally poetic treatment of historical drama, and it's unapologetic fascination with corporeal degradation. "Hunger" keens it's electronic eye on an early 80's hunger strike by IRA prisoners. Focusing on leader Bobby Sands the picture first illustrates the prisoner's efforts to be recognized as combatants through fecal disobedience and then through the self negation of willful starvation. For all it's stark visual horror/beauty, and deft human touches (a shaken prison guard smoking uneasily in light snowfall) there's not enough credible recognition that the tribulations within the Maze Prison's walls are connected to the IRA's greater struggle, the sort of dismissal Maggie Thatcher had been pushing all along. McQueen does wonders with space and light, but his characterization of Sands is by turns overly pat or overly opaque. It's a shame that when we look into the dying man's eyes we're deprived of the image's fascinating mystery and imposed upon with cliched childhood flashback and longing. I am quite curious as to how lead actor Michael Fassbender (assuming it's him and not a double) achieved his ghoulish state of skeletal decline - unlike the ghastly bedsores which can easily be attributed to talented makeup, the physical lack on display is difficult to dismiss as smoke and mirrors.