Steve McQueen is no newcomer to awards and acclaim. Hunger, his latest success and first feature won the Camera d’Or (the award for best first feature) at the Cannes Film Festival last May. In 1999, he was awarded the Turner Prize and will be representing Britain this year at the Venice Biennale. But the acclaim is well justified. Hunger, which screens in the Walker Cinema April 10-26, was made because McQueen wanted to create a film about “an extraordinary world that has become ordinary.” And so he has, in three distinct parts, created a different realm for viewers to enter in and experience the hunger strike of 1981.
Hunger is tactilely-visual, which at times makes the film hard to watch. In an article from the New York Times, McQueen said, “If you see a drop of rain on someone’s knuckle, you feel it because you know that physical sensation. That sensory experience brings you closer to an emotional one.” McQueen has mastered this experience he speaks of. In the opening of Hunger, a guard dips his hands-whose knuckle are covered in freshly opened-sores-in scalding hot water, as the camera pans up to his sullen eyes reflected in the mirror. There is nothing numb about this scene or the movie, for that matter.
Similar to the visuals, the component of sound in the film is absolutely remarkable. McQueen talked about the sound in Hunger in Issue 23 of Reverse Shot:
Reverse Shot: The aesthetic of the film overall is so striking, but perhaps most striking is the care put into the sound design.
Steve McQueen: I spoke to the sound recordist and told him that I wanted him to capture everything. If someone’s finger is tapping on the table, I wanted it. I wanted all the details. Sound, for me, was the most important part of the film because it fills the spaces where the camera just can’t go. A sound can give you the dimensions of a room. It can give you smell, it can give you tension. In some ways sound can travel itself into other areas of our senses, other areas of our psyche that unfortunately cannot be just viewed. Imagine you’re in a room with the lights switched off and you have to feel your way around a room. This is a chair, this is a table, this is a light switch. You have to use your other senses to figure out what you’re looking at. As you’re watching the piece, that’s what I wanted.
The sound design is certainly atmospheric, but it also becomes a bit unbearable at times, though in a paradoxically pleasurable way.
One can talk about the sounds of the baton banging on the plastic shields as being unbearable as such, but that’s what actually happened. It’s raised the tension of the prisoners, but the noise also was a way of rallying the guards. The sound passes on that tension to the audience. Your heartbeat races, your anxiety increases. It’s the perfect soundtrack.
Immediately after I viewed the film, there was nothing I could say, nothing I wanted to say. At that moment, it seemed that any movement, word, description, or analysis would in some way taint what I just experienced.
And so I walked back to my desk speechless and proceeded to lunch-an irony that was not lost upon me. Over the course of my break, I found myself unable to take my mind off of Hunger, an entrancement that extended into the weekend.
I spoke very little about Hunger besides a mere mention that I saw it. A friend asked over the weekend what I thought of the movie, since he had recently read a write-up. All I could say was “You simply need to see it.” For a moment I contemplated extrapolating, but refrained. “McQueen’s praise isn’t for nothing-he is doing something very right,” I said.
There exists a tremendously thin and seemingly tight line in making any remark about the movie. Because of the breathtaking pacing, composition, and camera movement (or lack thereof), it seems instinctual to say the movie is beautiful. But when you step back from your experience (I say experience because Hunger extends much farther than simply a film), you are appalled by the actions and plights of human kind.
Recently in an interview with McQueen, he mentioned how people are shocked when they see the brutality in Hunger, of reliving and remembering what happened in 1981. Not an attempt to justify the happenings both in 1981 and the replication in Hunger, McQueen reminds that events and brutality such portrayed in the film are still happening to this day. He brings up Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
After looking into the history of the Troubles and the 1981 hunger strike, I realized that background information is not necessary before watching Hunger. Because of the film’s structure and attention to every detail, every perspective, part of me thinks each viewer should go in empty handed. To have no prior knowledge of Hunger, of McQueen, of the 1981 hunger strike, the audience is able to then be completely immersed; let it be said, however, that in this day and age, it is impossible to have a completely primary experience. Regardless of how much or little you know, Hunger will be an experience that will be mulled over for some time after.
This said, what is interesting to note is that Hunger is McQueen’s first feature film (previously he was a gallery artist): You should also know that he is about the visceral rather than the technique (he attended the Tisch School for film but left because “It was full of all these rich kids who could afford the fees. It was nothing to do with talent.”) Lastly, you should know that Steve McQueen captures the essence of life and the essence of filmmaking that is lost upon so many and in watching Hunger, McQueen’s vision of history, of art, and of human kind is extended and leaves an imprint in the viewer.
Because of the immensely diverse responses I assume Hunger will create, I would like to offer up this place as a forum to discuss/share your reaction and thoughts on the film.
Hunger screens Friday and Saturday April 10, 11, 17, 18, and 25 at 7:30 pm and Saturday and Sunday April 11 and 26 at 2 pm in the Walker Cinema.
This is not really a response to Emily’s post. It’s more just simply my experience in seeing the film.
Heading into the Walker’s Cinema to see “Hunger” a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
My exposure to McQueen had been minimal. I had recently worked on a still from one of his films for The Quick and the Dead exhibition catalogue (which opens at the Walker next week). I knew he is a British visual artist (and not the American actor who died in 1980) and that his films fall into the experimental category. I knew this was his first feature film. And, I had seen the powerful trailer for it. http://www.hungerthemovie.co.uk/#/video/
As for the subject of the film, Irish Republican Army member, Bobby Sands, who starved himself to death while being held in prison by the British in the early Eighties, I knew a little more. I remembered the bloody battles, the bombings, the hunger strike, and Sands’ final days being counted in the news.
I also knew of the countless critical acclaims the film was getting and of the awards it had received.
Moments into the film, I understood exactly why it is getting such reviews. It is beautifully-visualized, tightly-edited and perfectly-acted. Yes, of course, it has experimental elements. But the film wouldn’t succeed so well if it didn’t have them.
To me, there are many religious overtones in the film. Fitting, since the war the IRA was fighting was intertwined with religious freedom. My perception is that day-to-day life in Northern Ireland is heavily influenced by the church.
The story is told in three acts. First is the brutal life inside the Maze prison near Belfast where IRA prisoners were held. Second is the discussion between Sands and a Catholic priest about merits of Sands’ decision to go on a hunger strike. Third is the days following Sands’ decision until his death. To place the viewer squarely in the environment, the camera and sound often focus on the smallest of details.
The film opens following one of the guards preparing for a day’s work. It shows him, among other things, in his pullover sweater quietly having his morning tea from a flowery cup and eating pastries. There is a close-up shot of crumbs falling to the lace napkin on his lap. Maybe it’s just me being a “tuff” American thinking only wussies have lace napkins in their laps and that wussies certainly can’t be mean. Ha, but there are also close-ups of his bloodied knuckles. For me, many questions surrounded this guard. He had an Irish accent. At times it seemed as though he was in conflict with what he was doing to the prisoners. But when it came to controlling them, it appeared he relished doing so. Was it just a job that he had for years that morphed into something he didn’t sign up for when these unusual prisoners came along? Was it unquestioned duty typical in a strong religious culture? Or did he totally believe these prisoners needed to be taught a lesson? His anger said “maybe.”
The prison act has some of the most brutal and disturbing scenes in a film that I can remember. Comparisons to what we know of Abu Grahib and Guantanamo are completely understandable and legitimate.
IRA prisoners sent to Maze refused to wear prison-issued clothing and often went naked. They also started the “dirty protest” in which their excrement was smeared on the cell walls. There is very little dialog in this act. I’ve been in prisons numerous times as a journalist, but just a few hours at a time. I would imagine that most of the time not much is said there. Maybe the incarcerated don’t talk because they live in their imagination. Maybe they don’t want to expend the energy. Maybe they’re bored/depressed. Maybe, especially for political prisoners, they assume guards are listening. The life here is told through stunning visuals and intense scenes of the prison experience. As Emily points out, the sound design in the cells puts the finishing touch on just how real these shots feel. Much of what is on the sound tract is happening outside the cells. Of the many memorable scenes, one stands out to me as quite symbolic. A prisoner plays with a house fly at the expanded metal screen over the cell window. The fly is free to come and go but most likely calls the filth in the cell its home, too. They are cellmates.
The discussion between Sands and the priest in the middle act also has a few symbolic threads. The priest is upset because his younger brother, who is also a priest, got promoted to have a whole parish, complete with two cars, a maid and a driver and a much larger salary. So much for a Roman Catholic priest believing in the 10th Commandment. Sands, using the same arguments that possibly Jesus used, tries to justify his decision to use his body to stand up to government in the name of freedom. The priest says it’s suicide and that the Brits won’t cave. Is this the same discussion that was made at the Last Supper? The majority of this act is made in one, 17-minute-long, single camera shot. Truly amazing.
Michael Fassbender lost 40 pounds to show how Sands deteriorated in the 66 days leading to his death. The shots here are very poetic. He slowly starts to hallucinate and then examine some of his childhood days. I bring along a bit of baggage when it comes to films showing death. I watched my mother’s last gasps for air and I’ve thought countless hours of what my brother was going through in the final hours before his suicide. In my eyes, McQueen depicted it perfectly.
It was difficult relating to Sands as a sympathetic character. Most of us can’t connect to life in prison. Especially that prison and those conditions. And most of us don’t consider dying for what we believe in. I think what McQueen wants us to do is observe. To live with the prisoners. I did for those 96 minutes.
Comment by Greg Beckel — April 17, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
[...] intern, Emily Hanson had some interesting observations on the film, and I tend to agree that the less you know about this film going into it the better, but [...]
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