Hunger 8

When you think of a definition for the word hunger thoughts of emptiness resonate through the mind. Hunger is not a want but rather an urgent need to fill a void with sustenance for survival. The emotional stress automatically associated with the digestion of such a draining word is a significant clue into the intentions this film has to render your feelings giving you insight into the ghastly world of starvation. Steve Mcqueen’s feature is a poignant and theatrical poem combining illustrious audio and visual effects that affect the reader’s consciousness.  With stark attention to minor yet volatile details Mcqueen violently consumes the viewer’s senses while congruously portraying the tragically epic journey of a struggle for freedom. The story amalgamates several different perspectives throughout its three acts in which we are given insight into the lives of both prisoners and prison guards in Northern Ireland’s Maze prison. The events depicted explain the key elements leading up to the 1981 hunger strike initiated by political prisoner Bobby Sands in which he and eight other prisoners starve to death in order to enact social change during a time of political war.

The film begins with an emphasis on the bruised and battered hands of a seemingly ordinary man. He dresses himself and partakes in a normal looking breakfast before gathering his things and heading to his car to get to work. We soon find out this man with the bruised hands has a very different leaving-for-work rituals than an ordinary man would. His wife anxiously peers out the window as he stoops down to peak under his car. He discovers no bomb under his vehicle and continues his venture to work where he buttons up his prison guard uniform and faces a new day. At the Maze prison just after the bruised hand man’s arrival we are introduced to a newly captured prisoner named David Gillen. During booking Gillen states that he will not wear the clothes of a criminal and is reported as nonconforming. Refusal to wear criminal’s clothes is just the first step of rebellion for this newly incarcerated political prisoner. Gillen is led down a dim hallway and plunged into a cell where he meets his cellmate Gerry Campbell, who is another Irish Republican Army political prisoner. The walls of the tiny room are caked and smeared feces while Campbell appears to be a wild man with overgrown facial hair and a tangled mess of hair attached to the top of his head. As the new cell mates discuss the terms of their sentences you begin to understand that the next years of these prisoners’ lives will be squalid and dangerous.

Mcqueen fluidly paints us into a hypnotic trance as riot police prepare in full gear for the movies next graphically violent scene. Ornamented with batons and shields like modern war paint the guards stand shoulder to shoulder and begin a ritualistic rhythm that penetrates our senses like a punch to the face. One by one prisoners are extracted from their cells and thrown down the deafening hall of brute force. After several minutes of beating and abuse the prisoner is subjected to a violent cavity search that not only rapes the body but also mind and spirit. These terroristic acts of torture are a breaking point among the unified prisoners. Bobby Sands dangerous and rebellious plan comes into full view during a riveting scene of tennis table talk with a Catholic Priest. Bobby is pleading his case as the martyr of a great cause while the Priest urges him to comply with governmental regulations to prevent the mass starvation suicide. Sands informs the priest that he is prepared to do whatever it takes to enact reform and is comfortable with the idea of sacrificing his life in order to make life better for those yet to come. The remaining portion of the film is a beautiful and yet tragic depiction of the horrific death that comes with the starvation of one’s body. Mcqueen elegantly explores Bobby Sands death in a way that affects how your body feels watching it. Allowing the viewer insight into a starving man’s decsent this film creates an experience explaining what true hunger must feel like. During his final days Bobby Sands body not only starved for nurishment but also for freedom. It was his hunger for freedom that granted him the bold abilities to suffer a self inflicted death in order to be released from the hell he was trapped in. It takes a strong heart and will of character to sacrifice you’re life in such an agonizing way and this film does a superb job of bestowing respect to Bobby Sands legacy.