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 |  | | | | | | ©2009 IFC Films | Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo - these words have become synonymous with torture and abuse of prisoners, yet in his explosive film "Hunger," first-time British director Steve McQueen, a Turner Prize-winning black visual artist, reminds us that the US does not have a monopoly on the use of coercive violence against prisoners of war. Here the setting is Belfast's Maze prison and the prisoners are not Arabs but members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a group of volunteers whose stated goal is to end "British rule in Ireland," and "to establish an Irish Socialist Republic, based on the Proclamation of 1916."
Co-written by McQueen and Enda Walsh, "Hunger" provides little historical background nor clear elucidation of the issues involved, only the stark reality of the prison experience, dramatizing, in excruciating detail, the hunger strike led by IRA Bobby Sands in 1981 to restore his fellow inmates' special status as political prisoners. The film opens with a woman banging a trash-can lid against the street. Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), a British guard at Maze prison is then seen going through his morning routine at home, washing his injured hands, eating his breakfast. Living in fear, he surveys the silence outside of his home, checks underneath his car for a bomb, and turns the key in his car with trepidation.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| The scene then shifts to the prison where Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan), a new arrival in "H" block is beaten by the guards after he refuses to wear the clothing issued by the prison in protest against the inhumane nature of the penal system. He is thrown into a cell with Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon) in which the walls are covered with feces and puddles of urine are seen in the hallways. The prisoners who also have refused to wash in protest are wrapped only in dirty blankets. Prisoners are forcibly dragged to be washed in a bathtub, and then are beaten and bloodied again. Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) is not seen until halfway into the film when he is dragged out of his cell to be washed by prison officers who violently cut his hair.
The high point of the film is a 22-minute discussion between Sands and a moderate Catholic priest Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham). Captured in a single shot, they talk about the ethics and the practicality of the hunger strike which Sands has just announced with the priest doing his best to persuade Sands from what would be tantamount to suicide. His story about being with Belfast chums on a cross-country running trip and agonizing over what to do with a foal dying in a river is a moving testament to the depth of his commitment to a cause that he is ready to die for. Sands tells Father Moran who does not believe a hunger strike will make the British capitulate, "I will not stand by and do nothing."
The hunger strike, which attracted widespread support throughout Ireland, eventually led to the death of ten prisoners including Bobby Sands but ushered in a period of compromise and reconciliation that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the ultimate end of the armed campaign. "Hunger" is not comfortable to sit through, especially as we witness Sands' slow physical deterioration, yet it stands as a solemn reminder of the inhumanity that occurs when democratic rights are flouted, from the Holocaust to Abu Ghraib. It is a brutal, stomach-turning film that reinforces the poisonous hatred that human beings are capable of, yet, through the beauty of its art, opens the door wide enough to allow us to also glimpse the strength of the human spirit.
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©2009 OhmyNews
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