Hunger

Established artists who’ve made midcareer leaps from gallery to movie house have not easily found their footing. But British video artist Steve McQueen is the exception. Hunger, which won the prize for best first feature at Cannes last May, is a superbly balanced piece of work, addressing the passion of Irish Republican martyr Bobby Sands, who starved himself to death in Belfast’s Maze prison in 1981. Perhaps because of McQueen’s experience making video installations, Hunger is a compelling drama that’s also a formalist triumph. McQueen is not just remarkably sensitive to duration, structure and camera placement but he also brings those issues to the forefront without mitigating their power. As its title suggests, Hunger has existential situations — imprisonment, punishment, faith in history (if not God). One never knows the precise crimes the prisoners may have committed, and the jailers, too, are shown locked into their social roles. By Hunger‘s harrowing final movement, the subject is exclusively Sands (Michael Fassbender) or rather the physical state of his emaciated body as he lies on a prison-hospital cot covered with running sores and stigmata lesions. One can barely watch this living cadaver or the bedside food tray that is his constant temptation. I’ve seen Hunger three times, and with each screening, the spectacle of violence, suffering and pain becomes more awful and more awe-inspiring.