No Ordinary Fool

Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions.

- Michel Foucault

A film in three distinct acts, Hunger portrays the events inside the Maze Prison, Belfast, in the early eighties, when IRA prisoners took increasingly desperate measures in their campaign to receive the status of political prisoners. Beginning with the refusal to wear the prison uniform or to even wash themselves, the prisoners live in the vile filth of their cells. By the time the film begins, both this protest and an initial mass hunger strike have failed to bend the British government’s positon on their status. Instead, the disembodied voice of Thatcher addressing parliament suggests that her stance is hardening. Soon, the prisoners, led by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) will begin a new hunger strike, which they are prepared to continue until they die.

The first act shows daily live inside of the prison. The inmates are doing everything in their power to make their cells as disgusting as possible, whilst the wardens face an unceasing fight to maintain some level of hygiene on the prison block. Be under no illusion, though, the wardens are no shrieking violets and their methods in dealing with the pugnacious prisoners are uncompromisingly brutal. In a mostly wordless depiction, events focus on Ray (Stuart Graham), one of the prison wardens, and two prisoners, Gerry (Liam McMahon) and Davey (Brian Milligan). The various incidents that they undergo serve only to present a grim, graphic, and grotesque demonstration of the inhumane life that all of these men endure.

There then follows a remarkable and lengthy scene involving Sands and a priest, Fr. Moran (Liam Cunningham), that he asks to visit him. Co-written by Enda Walsh and director Steve McQueen, it is a fascinating game of verbal chess between two courageous, eloquent, and thoughtful men of conviction, as they discuss their backgrounds, the Republican movement, and the morality of being prepared to die voluntarily from hunger. Both actors excel in an easy exchange of quick-witted lines, as plumes of cigarette smoke rise slowly towards the ceiling. It is a powerful scene made all the more memorable by Fr. Moran’s sad farewell when he realises that nothing more can be said.

The final part of the film witnesses the slow and painful death of Sands. The one dialogue of any note explains only too clearly the physucal traumas that Sands is enduring as he dies. This chilling description is then made entirely vivid by Fassbender, who has lost an astonishing amount of weight (three stone in ten weeks from an already slender frame) to portray his increasingly emaciated character. His portrayal of Sands, as both his mind and ragdoll body fail him, is a truly haunting image. Moreover, it is enhanced by the silent tenderness with which the prison attendee (Lalor Roddy) treats Sands and the stoicism with which his parents respect his decision to starve himself to death.

As a directoral debut, artist Steve McQueen has created an intense, troubling, and daring work that asks many difficult questions of its audience. It is a harrowing film that contrasts the abstract world of government policy with the human face of those ready to suffer and die by way of subsequent protest. While some of the imagery can be suggestive of Nazi concentration camps or even  religious iconography, Hunger generally stays clear of the glorification of one side or the villification of the other.  Instead, what it shows is that there are no winners or losers in this squalid microcosm of Northern Ireland. Each character is very much a victim.

In all, this is a challenging, serious, uncompromising film. It is shocking without being sensationalist and emotional without being mawkish in its representation of a part of our society that most of us would like not to think much about. The fact that the delapidated Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, alone, still houses prisoners is proof enough of this assertion. While it may not get the audience that it deserves due to its dauntless visual approach, this is a genuinely unmissable piece of cinematic art.