Brian Berta I just thought this movie was alright on my first viewing. There were a few aspects I really liked about it such as the middle scene and the depiction of the hunger strike. However, I originally disliked how attention was taken away from most of the characters introduced in the first act. Overall, it feels like an odd choice to introduce multiple characters only to have them leave the film half an hour later, doesn't it? However, after I revisited this movie a couple more times, I loved it to such great of an extent that it's now one of my favorite films of all time.Northern Ireland, 1981. After the government withdraws the political status of all paramilitary prisoners, the inmates of the Maze Prison retaliate by forming a blanket and a no wash protest, ultimately leading to a hunger strike led by one of the inmates, Bobby Sands.This movie is clearly an unconventional film due to the lack of dialogue and the plot structure. One thing I've learned from watching unconventional movies is that while they may have glaring flaws on the surface, the director might have a good reason for making the film that way. For instance, Bela Tarr and Michael Snow had good reasons for drawing out Satantango and Wavelength as much as they did and Stan Brakhage had good reasons for including no sound in most of his films. Sometimes, if I think more about aspects which seem like glaring flaws in unconventional films, it starts to make sense that a director would make their film that way. That was how I warmed up to this film.What I love about this movie is its unique story structure. I initially thought it was a traditional three-act structure. However, I make the argument that the first and the third acts are bookends to the dialogue sequence in the middle. The first act showed the failed protests and the consequences they had on both the guards and the prisoners, the second act showed a prisoner revealing his plans of a more organized protest, and the third act showed that protest in action. By featuring only one prisoner in the third act, I think the statement McQueen is making here is that the hunger strike protest worked better as, since there were less people involved, it was more organized. I initially criticized the movie for taking attention away from several of the characters introduced in the first act, but I now think that this decision helped the film.Another point which McQueen appears to be making here is that both sides are tired of the protest but are unwilling to back down. This is conveyed in numerous places such as how Raymond Lohan can be seen cleaning his bloodied knuckles a couple times in the film. There's also a powerful moment where a prison guard can be seen crying while the rest of the guards beat numerous prisoners with batons. This implication also extends to different prisoners such as Gerry as his emotions convey fright and determination as he smears his faeces on the wall for the protest. These scenes add a layer of humanity to this film.It's also hard not to talk about the number of memorable moments found in the film such as the captivating and well-acted dialogue sequence in the middle which feels like the film's centerpiece. Besides that scene, however, dialogue feels unimportant to absorbing the rest of the film and its characters, so the mostly dialogue free film seems to thrive on this restriction. There's also other chilling moments outside of the dialogue such as when Lohan is killed by an IRA assassin in front of his catatonic mother who seems unaware of her surroundings. Another great scene is the long, stationary, and expressive shot of a prison attendant cleaning up multiple puddles of urine. Finally, it's hard not to mention the painfully realistic depiction of Sands' hunger strike. To film that sequence, Fassbender went on a diet of less than 900 calories for 10 weeks to give the illusion of starvation. This sequence was filled with clever moments such as a montage of Sands' food servings slowly getting smaller as he inched closer to death, images and sounds of flying birds as he convulsed in pain, and what I think was his hallucination near the end of his strike.In conclusion, I think this film is a masterpiece, and it's, currently, my favorite film of the 2000's. It's also one of the best debut films I've seen before. While this film can be hard to watch due to the brutal and disturbing content found throughout, it remains so compelling for a variety of reasons that you can't turn away from the picture. Not for the faint of heart, but a must-see for older viewers.

andreiamarianaf Steve McQueen became known due to his extreme sensibility and sharpness when representing through cinema certain aspects of the human condition. His first film, Hunger, starring Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, was released in 2008 and tries to bring to the spectator a wide view of the story behind the Hunger Strikes of 1981 that took place in Maze Prison during the period of The Troubles, in Ireland. The accuracy of the film is very evident, since you can depict several references and an overview of the conflicts that led to the protests in there represented, but it was the feature's crude and raw outlook what impressed most people. The approximately first ten minutes of the film offer us a perspective of a man who is, even though we don't know that at first, a guard of the Maze Prison. What we get from the initial moments is just an insight of the morning routine of this man. Everything seems normal until he steps out of the door of his house and walks towards his car. He looks down the street, and then below his car before he enters, and his wife is on the window watching it happening. There is a close-up shot of the moment he starts the ignition and when he pulls off his wife seems relieved. There is a plainness that lingers both in the way he eats his breakfast and in the way he is checking out the street. His wife's expression is the most obvious sign of some kind of fear. What these first scenes try and in fact are able to do, is show the paranoiac but justified climate in which officers from the Maze Prison lived at the time. The guards were forced to beat up the non-cooperative prisoners, to give them baths or haircuts forcibly too. A scene with an outsider police force emphasises the brutality inflicted to those men. Violence is one of the most cold-hearted aspects of this film and we are given an incredibly vast amount of scenes with blood and beatings. It is rather obvious that a lot of references used in the film are taken from passages of Bobby Sands' Prison Diary. When starting the fasting, Sands also engaged in the writing of a record of the first seventeen days of the hunger strike. Being a direct statement (and, therefore, contribution) from Sands himself, the diary became a precious primary source in the understanding of his ideas when starting the protest. Trivial things such as the fact that the prisoners smoked paper rather than cigarettes, used to get notes from outside the prison, or even the importance of family in Sands' life are stuff McQueen picked up and used in the film to enrich its record. The scene with the priest, being one of the longest shots in the history of cinema, is of extreme importance. Bobby Sands tells a childhood story about how he had to kill a little foal for the animal's own sake and what we may call best interest, because none of the boys that were with him had the guts to do it. By doing so, Bobby not only assumed a role of leadership, but also took the blame and paid the consequences of it. The idea of him as a figure of leadership is reinforced with this analogy for the state of the situation he was living at the time. The story about his willingness to sacrifice himself for something bigger than him works as an explanation on initiating a second hunger strike (since there was a first one that failed its purposes) and dying for that cause. The birds that appear in several scenes are very revealing since these animals are usually associated with freedom, the ultimate desire of Bobby Sands, which might explain his constant return to them (another reference to the diary, where Sands frequently mentions birds). All the small details and references based on the materialisation of historical occurrences nourish and garnish the film, making Steve McQueen's effort to represent the events of the Hunger Strike of 1981 a well-accomplished record of the brutality of the situation. The feature, regardless all its artistic aspects, reports accurately and faithfully a visual recollection of what happened in Ireland during one of its most problematic times. This film's significance surpasses its own purposes as a work of art, becoming an utterly complete memoir. "Hunger" is a word that not only remits to what happened, but also expresses a deeper meaning. I believe that this title was chosen in the attempt to reflect a profound hunger, that of the person as a human being, of a living thing that can fight and pursuit what it believes in. Bobby Sands indeed died of hunger, but not just a physically possible to-end one; his hunger was so sunken in his creeds, in his so eager desire of freedom, that he was willing to starve for it.

mifunesamurai A remarkable feature debut from director McQueen. It was only after I had seen, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, that I tracked down this film, and I was not disappointed. McQueen is a thinking persons director, he is not a director that makes every scene so blatantly obvious. You have to work for it and the rewards are rich in pure mental stimulation. What is also rewarding is the performances. Not only is Fassbender outstanding, but the support cast as well. The acting is paramount as it brings realism to the hideous conditions in a world we all fear, that of the Irish Maze Prison during the civil conflict. McQueen does not shy away from the politics that tore a nation apart, nor does he tone down the harrowing violence within the faeces smeared walls. Be patient, and the film will reward you. If you are looking for entertainment, then please go elsewhere. Now time to track down McQueen's 2011 movie, SHAME.

luke-a-mcgowan Hunger (tells?) the story of Bobby Sands, an Irishman who led the hunger strikes in Ireland in demand of IRA political status. Steve McQueen flexes his considerable talents as a director in his feature film debut, and does unparalleled work creating the atmosphere of the prison. The violence, the degrading treatment, the bare-all nudity and filth is so real and so authentic that the audience easily feels sickened by just watching it. McQueen does a great job showing both sides of the conflict, guards and prisoners, and how much both sides hated the experience but were forced into it. Michael Fassbender gives one of 2008's finest performances as Bobby Sands, demonstrating with skill his demeanour and how it changes as the hunger strike proceeds. However, Hunger's narrative is nowhere near as compelling as the atmosphere in which the film takes place. It takes around 25 minutes to even meet Bobby Sands' character, instead spending time with far less interesting characters whose job is pure exposition and atmospheric set up. The pacing in Hunger is glacial, which may suit some more compelling prison movies like The Green Mile, but is inappropriate in a more straightforward film. This is one of the longest 90 minute films I've ever sat through. The dialogue is completely incoherent in places, which really undoes much of the film's pivotal scene. The Irish accents are so thick and the dialogue comes so fast that many non-Irish viewers will struggle to keep up with the narrative.Overall, Hunger is an atmospheric achievement for Steve McQueen and a revelation for Michael Fassbender, but is slow-paced, unfocused and incoherent. Viewers will finish the movie thankful for its end, and not in the way the film intends or desires.