If you’re tiring of the rhythms of Hollywood – the pap-pap-pow! of action, comedy, and fantasy alike – give Hunger a try. The subject matter is bleak, dealing with the prison hunger strike of Provisional IRA man Bobby Sands in 1981: the violence, the excrement, the slow decline into death. This isn’t a happy picture, but it’s execution is art – not a surprise once you realise that the director is Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen. Every shot is framed like a picture that gets more interesting the longer you stare at it, and even the mopping of a floor somehow becomes interesting.
For the first half it’s very much a film about the senses, the environment and how people relate to the little details that become everything in prison – all shot with an almost perversely artistic cinematic eye. (Such grimness, so gorgeously shot. Even the excrement on the wall looks like something you’d find in Tate Modern.) There’s no significant dialogue until 15 minutes in, and the only ‘proper’ conversation takes place in the middle, between Sands and a priest. This forms the psychological bedrock of the film, and goes on for a record breaking 17 and a half minutes. The second half is all Sands, played by the excellent Michael Fassbender (German-born, raised in Ireland, if you were wondering). These two halves tot up to a refreshingly taut 90 minutes.
Not to go all arts school, but if you think turning suffering into art for the sake of understanding is one of the functions of cinema, then rent this film. It’s not really about the politics of the situation, but more about the sensations and drives of the prisoners and the guards, living in bubbles – influenced by the distant voices of politicians, drifting in over the wireless to punctuate the silence.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 