The hunger artist
Hunger is a film about the imprisoned Irish Republican Army (IRA) member Bobby Sands, who in 1981 went on a 66-day hunger strike in an attempt to force the British government to recognize him and his fellow IRA members as political prisoners. It is the first feature by the British visual artist Steve McQueen (not the late American star), winner of the Turner Prize in 1999. His previous films include Deadpan, a re-staging of the scene from the Buster Keaton movie in which a house collapses around him, and Drumroll, made with three cameras mounted on an oil drum which the artist rolled up and down the streets of New York City.
McQueen’s stark, economical style gives Hunger a visceral power: this is a film to be viewed with all the senses. You feel the cold in the cell blocks of Northern Ireland’s infamous Maze Prison, smell the filth smeared on the walls, taste the pages of the Bible that the prisoners smoke in lieu of cigarettes. Towards the end, when Sands’ body has shriveled from starvation, the horror is mingled with a strange euphoria. Hunger is a movie about Sands that is not really about the IRA or the Troubles in Ireland, but about human beings and how much they can take.
We don’t even see Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) until half an hour has elapsed, and when we do there is no announcement that the main protagonist has arrived. The film begins during the “blanket” and “dirty” protests of the imprisoned IRA members — they refused to wear the prison uniforms, so they went naked, wrapped only in blankets; they were not allowed to use the lavatory unless they were clothed, so they... didn’t use the lavatory. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appears only as a disembodied voice reiterating her government’s refusal to accord political status to the prisoners.
The story unfolds in a series of arresting images: a prison guard plunging his scraped and bloody knuckles into the sink; streams of urine seeping under the cell doors and flowing onto the corridor; a man in a hazmat suit turning a high-pressure hose on a mandala-like painting on the wall, which you realize is made of excrement. These images are so perfectly composed and framed, they become beautiful despite their subject matter.
Though Hunger clearly sympathizes with Sands and even portrays him as a Christ-like figure, there is no out-and-out villain in this piece. The government is a distant entity and its enforcers, the prison guards, are regarded with compassion. Violence brutalizes everyone, even the man meting it out. Not that the prisoners were pacifists themselves; their comrades on the outside continued to commit acts of violence, including the murder of many prison guards. In one scene, a good-looking young riot policeman is being trucked to the prison to quell another protest; he’s so nervous, he looks like he’s about to throw up. As the riot police beat on their shields he lets out a scream of fear and rage that is barely heard above the clangor.
The first act is almost a silent film; the second is all talk. A priest (Liam Cunningham) visits Bobby Sands, they shoot the breeze, and then Sands reveals his decision to go on hunger strike. He knows that he will probably die. The priest calls his plan suicide, and for 20 minutes they have a spirited argument about the morality of the hunger strike. This amazing scene happens in a single take: the camera does not blink as the two men do battle with words. Hunger shows the different kinds of violence and this is one of them, polite but no less ferocious.
The stripped-down intensity of the film comes as no surprise to viewers familiar with McQueen’s work, but the quality of the performances he gets from his cast is astonishing. This is the first time the artist has worked with actors, and he has the assurance of a filmmaker who knows exactly what he’s doing.
In the third act we watch Bobby Sands wasting away. It’s become a cliché to praise actors for undergoing physical transformations in aid of a performance; Michael Fassbender’s transformation is such a performance. His character is too weak to speak; he drifts in and out of consciousness. He remembers running through the woods as a boy, exulting in the open air; his final act is a desperate striving for that freedom. No matter how one feels about the hunger strike, this is not just a stunt to elicit pity or publicity. Death by starvation is probably the worst thing that can happen to the human body. It’s more terrible than the beatings in the prison, and he does it to himself. He has made his body a weapon.
Films of this nature usually leave the viewer feeling depressed and morbid, but after seeing Hunger I felt oddly elated. The noises of traffic, pandemonium on the street, people rushing about all seemed like a kind of poetry. Hunger is a film about death, but all you can think about is life.
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ERRATUM. The first anniversary event at the BenCab Museum in Baguio is not a group exhibition but a one-man show by John Frank Sabado called “Ecowarriors.” It opens at the museum’s Gallery Indigo tomorrow, February 27. At the show’s opening, Baguio artists will collaborate on a graffiti wall in the museum parking lot.
