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Visiting the Tate galleries on the annual school trip to view the Turner prize was my first encounter with Steve McQueen. An over-buttered sub roll and cheap packet of crisps later, and a stampede of girls charged with carbohydrates met the silence of the reverential, marble surrounds. Or at least that was until we had seen Tracy Emin’s My Bed, complete with empty booze bottles, used sheets and condom. In spite of the furore created by Emin’s work, it was McQueen who took the crown in 1999.
McQueen’s exhibition including the film short Deadpan, a re-enactment of Buster Keaton’s gag sequence in Steamboat Bill Jnr. (1928), starred the artist as the survivor of a falling house. Although a gag of sorts, the film illustrated the artist’s adept ability to mesmerise the viewer even if very little happens on screen. May that be a warning to some, but an invitation to many.
Hunger tells the story of Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), an IRA activist and inmate at Northern Ireland’s Maze prison who led the 1981 hunger strike. Although the context is explained in brief as the film opens, the focus of the plot is on the inmates fight to regain political status. Following a series of strikes that included a blanket protest (initiated in 1976) and the dirty protest – whereby inmates refused prison uniforms wearing only blankets and refrained from washing – Sands sought to lead the IRA’s second hunger strike to draw attention to the prisoners’ situation. Meaning the IRA inmates wouldn’t have to wear uniforms, do prison work and could in reality be used as bargaining chips for a potential ceasefire.
In theory, little else happens. The dialogue is limited save for the conversation between Sands and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham), where the prisoner explains the inmates’ situation and his unyielding decision to strike knowing that he will almost certainly die. However, the last six weeks of Sands’ life and the everyday situation of all the IRA prisoners, due to Margaret Thatcher’s decision to revoke political status, are raw and brutal. Within the first ten minutes excrement is plastered on walls, urine passed under doors and latterly maggot-infested food stashed in cells: these images are completely uncompromising.
The combination of McQueen’s artistic eye and that of cinematographer Sean Bobbitt has created a series of images that almost demand analysis. Not in a painfully overarching art historian fashion, but the cropping, choice depth of field and unusual angles are without doubt evocative. The triumvirate of religious imagery is almost undeniable: the cigarette smoke that burns throughout the men’s conversation suggests altar-like incense; the crumbs that fall into the guard’s lap at breakfast evokes the title and the body of Christ while Sands dilapidated body shot in profile imitates a painted Saint’s body found in a church annex.
At this point Julian Schnabel’s directorial debut The Diving Bell and the Butterfly sprung to mind, because like McQueen, Schnabel is a celebrated artist who successfully uses symbolism without being supercilious. Add to that the perfectly understated performance by Michael Fassbender’s as Bobby Sands, and together you have a film that manages to scream without shouting.
McQueen has captured the everyday drudgery and violence whilst avoiding the tag of a political film. As he put it himself: “My influences come from real life. I’m not interested in cinema for cinema’s sake. I’m interested in life – what one does and how one interacts.” Hunger is not a date movie, but the film’s subtleties and violence have combined to create a piece that will endure far beyond a choc top and a bag of popcorn.
Credits
Director and Writer: Steve McQueen
Writer: Enda Walsh
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Brian Milligan, Liam McMahon
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