MacGuffin
11-02-2008, 11:47 PM
Spoilers, but you're all going to see it right? Right? Plus it is a true story, so they don't really matter.
From my website:
Hunger, the Cannes Film Festival winner of 2008’s Camera d’Or directed by British film artist Steve McQueen, is indeed a beautifully shot, meticulously composed act of violence. Portraying the Maze Prison up until the hunger strikes led by inmate Bobby Sands in 1981, the film uses long takes and a number of close ups on shit stained walls, maggot infested vomit, and urine soaked floors to offer vibrant sensory imagery; but it also places beauty here and there: a prison guard whose bloodied knuckles and innerself are raging as he stands against a wall in the glorious snow, sees a rat, and then flicks a cigarette at it. When beauty, such as the snow, is onscreen, these “occasions” quickly are taken away from us.
That same prison guard is later assassinated in the film, interuppting what could have very well helped the prison guard, named Raymond Lohan in real life, overcome his psychological struggle. But these struggles are always plagued by a darkened prescene be it visible literally or otherwise, McQueen makes it known through his powerful images.
Later on, we meet another inmate named Gerry Campbell whose decision to conform and wear prisoners’ garments after telling the warden that “he is not a prisoner”, foreshadows claustrophobic and terrifying prison cell violence: a montage of images showing prisoners destroying cell furniture and chanting in unison as a result of the guards making prisoners wear laughably color coordinated clothing. This scene, however, does not compare to the harsh and uncivil treatment they get from a swat team during a routine checkup. A scene that includes a powerful moment of slow motion where McQueen’s skills as a compositionist are evident: prisoners getting violently beaten with a wall dividing them and a weeping swat guard outside the prison.
While we are introduced to Bobby Sands informally earlier on in the movie, we don’t actually see him as a pivotal character until the beginning of the third act or so: a ten minute unbroken static shot of dialogue between Sands and a priest where Sands reveals his hunger strike and ultier motives. The priest forsakens the idea, calling it destructiveness, but Sands, who compares his idea to an event in his childhood, is sure of himself, and as an audience, we are sure he is too. The last moments of the film unfold slowly: Fassbender as Bobby Sands giving the key performance, whose expressionless face explains all, as his progessive loss of weight is documented onscreen.
The movie, then, is clearly a focus of the power of ones’ self being. From the prison guards bloodied knuckles in a sink of water to hemmoraged sores of the lead’s back, this is the work of an artist; be it one who has not made a conventional “movie” before or otherwise. No, you could have fooled me, this being his “debut”. McQueen’s tale of hell and sacrifice, his ode to heroism shows he has a clear understanding of what makes cinema such an interesting medium. From the imaginitive structure, and the sometimes colorfully beautiful, sometimes damp and ugly images; to the sound mix, which feels more like a timer, getting quieter and quieter as the film reaches its ending and Bobby Sands dies, this is a movie from someone I imagine will be one to watch. Steve McQueen is a director who understands what sets us off just as he understands what sets off his characters.
From my website:
Hunger, the Cannes Film Festival winner of 2008’s Camera d’Or directed by British film artist Steve McQueen, is indeed a beautifully shot, meticulously composed act of violence. Portraying the Maze Prison up until the hunger strikes led by inmate Bobby Sands in 1981, the film uses long takes and a number of close ups on shit stained walls, maggot infested vomit, and urine soaked floors to offer vibrant sensory imagery; but it also places beauty here and there: a prison guard whose bloodied knuckles and innerself are raging as he stands against a wall in the glorious snow, sees a rat, and then flicks a cigarette at it. When beauty, such as the snow, is onscreen, these “occasions” quickly are taken away from us.
That same prison guard is later assassinated in the film, interuppting what could have very well helped the prison guard, named Raymond Lohan in real life, overcome his psychological struggle. But these struggles are always plagued by a darkened prescene be it visible literally or otherwise, McQueen makes it known through his powerful images.
Later on, we meet another inmate named Gerry Campbell whose decision to conform and wear prisoners’ garments after telling the warden that “he is not a prisoner”, foreshadows claustrophobic and terrifying prison cell violence: a montage of images showing prisoners destroying cell furniture and chanting in unison as a result of the guards making prisoners wear laughably color coordinated clothing. This scene, however, does not compare to the harsh and uncivil treatment they get from a swat team during a routine checkup. A scene that includes a powerful moment of slow motion where McQueen’s skills as a compositionist are evident: prisoners getting violently beaten with a wall dividing them and a weeping swat guard outside the prison.
While we are introduced to Bobby Sands informally earlier on in the movie, we don’t actually see him as a pivotal character until the beginning of the third act or so: a ten minute unbroken static shot of dialogue between Sands and a priest where Sands reveals his hunger strike and ultier motives. The priest forsakens the idea, calling it destructiveness, but Sands, who compares his idea to an event in his childhood, is sure of himself, and as an audience, we are sure he is too. The last moments of the film unfold slowly: Fassbender as Bobby Sands giving the key performance, whose expressionless face explains all, as his progessive loss of weight is documented onscreen.
The movie, then, is clearly a focus of the power of ones’ self being. From the prison guards bloodied knuckles in a sink of water to hemmoraged sores of the lead’s back, this is the work of an artist; be it one who has not made a conventional “movie” before or otherwise. No, you could have fooled me, this being his “debut”. McQueen’s tale of hell and sacrifice, his ode to heroism shows he has a clear understanding of what makes cinema such an interesting medium. From the imaginitive structure, and the sometimes colorfully beautiful, sometimes damp and ugly images; to the sound mix, which feels more like a timer, getting quieter and quieter as the film reaches its ending and Bobby Sands dies, this is a movie from someone I imagine will be one to watch. Steve McQueen is a director who understands what sets us off just as he understands what sets off his characters.