Hunger

In his debut directorial effort, filmmaker Steve McQueen has painstakingly brought into focus the life of Irish republican prisoners in the early 1980s, when the British government jailed anyone they found to be connected to the Irish Republican Army. McQueen is able to capture the numbing monotony of life behind bars and his attention to detail shines an intriguing light on this troubling piece of history. But while the mood of Hunger is as haunting as the subject matter suggests, McQueen's chilly direction ultimately alienates the crucial emotional elements of the story.

The beginning of Hunger is a slow and methodical look at the prison world on both sides of the bars. The focus switches between a single prison guard and two prisoners living in squalor, the trio of whom represents physical and psychological isolation in their own regard. The guard is constantly on his own, seemingly surviving the brutality of his job through sheer emotional detachment.

The two prisoners we first meet offer a disturbing look at their living conditions (for example, they have covered the walls of their cell with their own feces) and quickly communicate the weight of everyday boredom. In one scene, the newest prisoner awkwardly plays with a fly at the prison window, as he tries desperately to make some tangible connection to another living creature.

Eventually, McQueen turns his attention to a prisoner named Bobby Sands (played by Michael Fassbender), whose plan to go on a hunger strike becomes both the focus of the rest of the movie and the inspiration for its title. Why McQueen requires nearly a third of his movie to get to the main narrative thread is one of the great mysteries of Hunger. While the multiple scenes illustrating life in the prison for people other than Bobby Sands provide an insightful look at the horrors behind the walls, the movie never connected with me on a personal level.

When Hunger finally switches gears and becomes Bobby's story, I could not help but feel that McQueen wasted a considerable chunk of his movie by trying to stretch the narrative canvas into something larger and more universal. Once the attention turns to Bobby, he is front and centre for the rest of the movie, which makes the entire beginning feel like an intriguing distraction. Those early scenes are an eerie examination of the prison world, but they sacrifice the necessary human connection between viewer and onscreen characters.

Watching Hunger is like looking through a window into another world rife with sadness and despair. You can see the devastation, the pain and suffering, but you cannot reach out and touch it. There is a disconnect that reinforces the notion that we are safely viewing the horrors onscreen from our comfy seat in a movie theatre. McQueen and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt unearth some evocative imagery, but the vicarious visuals rarely translate to tangible dramatic energy.

Michael Fassbender actually shed a huge amount of weight for the movie, in order to convincingly illustrate the effects of Bobby Sands' 66-day hunger strike. Fassbender's extreme weight loss is a startling sight, but it feels like little more than a dangerous, committed stunt. It is impressive that the actor was willing to go to such lengths to bring this character to life, but the effect of his physical transformation is entirely of the shock and awe variety.

As much as Hunger operates as an emotionless wasteland, McQueen and Bobbitt deserve credit for giving the movie a unique visual identity. Many scenes are filled with long takes that communicate the unchanging stillness of prison life. One shot of Bobby and a priest having a conversation on either side of a table lasts for close to twenty minutes and the camera remains completely stationery for the entire time. The composition of each shot is continually used to evoke a sense of isolation and loneliness. The muddy brown and gray colour palette is also an integral part of the movie's visual makeup.

Hunger features a very clinical depiction of human suffering. The movie opened my eyes to the horrors faced by the imprisoned men and the strong imagery demands attention, but the narrative is unevenly structured and emotionally distant. McQueen has a lot of thoughts and ideas that he is eager to share about this piece of history, but he does so with the kind of disconnected observation that one might find in a dusty textbook. Hunger is an interesting movie that falls short of its goal, as it let me peer into the darkness of a hopeless prison cell, without ever making me feel the fear and discomfort of the walls closing in.