Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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.

Eric Calvo Hunger, Steve McQueen's full-length directorial debut, is an astounding and unflinching film. I'd been meaning to watch it for quite some time, but I finally got the chance a few days ago. I was not disappointed. What truly impresses me is how much McQueen can accomplish with so little dialogue. The opening shots show police officer Raymond in the midst of his daily routine. His brief check under his car for explosives perfectly brings us into the ghastly, yet clockwork reality of 1981 Northern Ireland without a word. We see real emotions -- tiredness, apathy, sadness -- on his face as he enters the prison. McQueen gives us a longshot of Raymond, standing outside in the cold, taking a drag from a cigarette as his bloodied knuckles soak in the falling snow. Already, we have so many questions, among them how he damaged his hand. Moreover, we're led to view Raymond in a sympathetic light -- perhaps as an altruistic police officer in the midst of an epidemic in human rights and incarceration. When we next see him bludgeoning main character and IRA leader Bobby Sands to the point of near death, the feeling of irony are almost palpable. We are robbed of the biased, pre-packaged perspective we crave. Every aspect of the events leading to the 1981 hunger strike is shown without censorship. My father remarked that he could almost taste the feces and bile in every cell shown. All of this is accomplished without a single word. When characters do speak in the film, it is complex and absolutely necessary. I'm sure many would agree that Hunger's focal point is the lengthiest bit of dialogue: a conversation between Sands and Father Dominic Moran on the upcoming hunger strike. It's a masterful scene, and one that requires the audience to hang on every single word. Actors Fassbender and Cunningham trade verbal blows for an astounding uninterrupted 17 minute shot. From that point on, the film is almost entirely Fassbender. One can only imagine the great care he took to become prepared for the character of Sands. The actual events are objective, yet he brings his own emotional and philosophical interpretation. The role is very physical in nature and Fassbender delivers unequivocally. When we look at Fassbender's emaciated face, we see a man who is ready to die, through and through. McQueen paces the plot unconventionally, yet every iota of time that passes feels perfectly placed. Nearly every scene is memorable and deserves an analytic essay. Music is used sparingly, and this is certainly a good thing. I find that certain moments create their own sort of soundtrack -- the "inspection" scene, complete with its percussive riot police, stands out in this regard. Any sort of score wouldn't fit this restrained film. However, when light strings appeared for the first time, I was taken aback by their effectiveness. Overall, Hunger is at once a minimalist piece and an uncompromising masterwork. It spares no gruesome detail from audience members, yet demands and ultimately holds their undivided attention. From nearly every stand point, Hunger is masterful.

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.

nox09 great acting from Fassbender , very realistic shot movie with a lot of violence and brutality . the Dialoge between Bobby and the priest was the best part in the movie , loved it and the whole hunger strike part was just painful to watch ( in a good way ) . i still think movie had a lot of scenes that were used for no reason , seen with the guard or the guy trying to play with the fly or the guy cleaning the walls, i understand that those scenes were helping to make realistic look and atmosphere but still did not work for me at least...... 1 thing that movie was lacking was emotions , movie felt a little flat . maybe director made it so it will look more artistic which it definitely did .