A HUNGER that feeds the soul?

Cinematic storytelling gets more spectacular lip service than Dizzy Gillespie‘s upswept trumpet. Film is a visual medium, they say; dialogue nearly an afterthought. And yet, movies remain talkier than Henry Jaglom on a Red Bull binge. Thus, it is a marvel to watch HUNGER, the first feature directed by Steve McQueen — the artist/auteur not the actor/corpse.

At its stunning core, HUNGER is a recapturing of the fatal hunger strike of Bobby Sands and his imprisoned IRA counterparts in 1981. But this is not your father’s jailhouse drama nor an A&E biography. This is a movie that summons the full power of its medium, refuting the over-simplification words would provide, instead immersing viewers in a brutal world of sights and sounds. Every moment, every image is harrowing: the riot squads’ billy clubs battering shields and  inmates; the prisoners’ fecal wallpapering of cells; the guard’s ritualistic cleansing of his blooded knuckles. HUNGER may favor the political protestors, yet the movie’s long, wordless passages provide an objectivity that is as liberating as they are disturbing. Witness the irregular bathing of the prisoners; the unfortunate soul who methodically sweeps pools of urine from the halls. The power of the movie’s one long stretch of talk is magnified by the “silences” surrounding it. HUNGER is unforgettable. It would be easy to suggest it celebrates the triumph of Sands’ will; however it is more effectively a condemnation of any society that would create the necessity for such triumph. The Maze Prison serves as a reflective microcosm of all of Northern Ireland; the madness within its walls, the profane embodiment of the madness of the violent, religious strife outside. One cannot critique this cuckoo’s nest without defiling the tree in which its perched.

HUNGER is story best told cinematically; one that could not be told better than by the inflammatory Steve McQueen.