Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Debb Curry-Millard I was 11 when this film was based. I used to watch the news and hear about the conditions within the prison and when the prisoners went in hunger strike. Didn't know about the "blanket" and "no bath" policy. So I watched this film with a very small understanding. There is very little dialogue in the film. The pictures tell the story. A prison officer going to work. A new prisoner saying he wanted to wear his own clothes. Being made to strip in front of a group of prison officers. The first sight of the cell which was so visceral I actually thought I could smell how bad it must have been. We are introduced to Sands (played brilliantly by Michael Fassbender) when he is taken to be washed and have his hair cut. I knew there was violence on both sides, however seeing that scene shocked me. Badly. I didn't know if I could watch the rest of the film. However, I'm glad I did. When the prisoners are given gaudy clothes and are in normal cells, they decide to make a point and start wrecking their cells. What follows had me in tears. In the Roman times, the army used to used decimation as a way of punishment. The punishment was death by clubbing or stoning. The scene with the prisoners having to make their way down a corridor with riot guards on both sides, hitting their shields to scare and using their batons to hurt, was reminiscent of this. Sands and his priest Dom meet and Dom tries to talk him out of the hunger strike accusing Sands of wanting to commit suicide and become a martyr. I've read that the two actors stayed with each other and practiced that scene over 10 times a day. There is no camera movement until near the end. It is one seamless shot. And it was done in 4 takes. There was also a scene where an officer was cleaning up the nightly urine which the prisoners emptied under their doors onto the corridor. Again, one camera until towards the end and it was beautiful. Never thought I'd call watching someone clean up urine beautiful.The last part of the film shows Sands at the end of his hunger strike. Again, not much dialogue; we just watched Sands get more ill and thinner to the point where he cannot stand the weight of clothes on his skin.It's diffic to say I enjoyed it as it's not a fluffy, feel good movie however it was a powerful film and I'm glad I did watch it.

daviddelamancha Never have I had to turn away my eyes from a movie screen until watching Michael Fassbender deliver this Daniel Day Lewis performance and putting his own body thru a grotesque transformation. I knew he was a great actor but not till seeing him in Hunger did I see the complete commitment to character. Being an ignorant American, I know almost nothing about what happened during these tumultuous times except for what I have read myself now older (thanks school system) Watch this and think about all the men and women used as commodities in our own prison systems. I cannot compare this to In The Name Of The Father, Papilon or Midnight Express, this stands on its own. I am going to watch everything director Steven McQueen has done now. Hope the review helps.

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.

avik-basu1889 Although Hunger was Steve McQueen's debut feature film, I watched Shame which was his 2nd film before Hunger. His style looked unique and brutally explicit, but at the same time delicately artistic with the right amount of reticence to challenge the viewer. I was so glad to find the same positive attributes about his directorial work in Hunger too. He is one of the most recent directors whom I can easily call an auteur due to his signature style.Like Shame, Hunger is also at times a very tough film to watch. McQueen leaves absolutely no stone unturned to depict the brutal realism connected with the subject matter. The film on the surface is about the well known IRA member Bobby Sand's revolt and the hunger strike that he declared to force the British Government to grant the demands of the IRA. But to be honest, the film has very little to do with the politics of the matter. McQueen is more concerned with the people caught in the midst of this traumatic stalemate situation. He is concerned with the psychological and of course the physical effect this situation has on these characters. I liked the fact that McQueen effectively remains unbiased and neutral throughout the whole film. This neutrality is accentuated by the fact that he uses the perspective of different people belonging to either side of the tussle in the screenplay. So not only do we get to live these traumatic days from the point of view of Bobby Sands and his fellow prisoners, but also from the point of view of prison guards and riot officers. It is shown that the ones executing the strikes might have had to endure physical pain and torture, but the ones on the other side had to endure psychological torture too as well as the lack of security in public. One of the most admirable features of Hunger is the use of silence in the film. Almost 75% of the scenes are silent or with very little dialogue. McQueen allows the visuals and facial gestures of the actors to convey a lot in many scenes in the film. The makeup of the actors and production design are also meticulous with a lot attention to detail. The prison cells look as realistic and as dirty and grim as possible. The prisoners look equally worn out due to the harsh treatments handed out to them. The makeup is so detailed that even the teeth of the prisoners look worn out and decayed.There is a famous one take conversation scene in the film that goes on for about 15 minutes. The conversation in this scene is almost as serene as a Symphony. It starts out on a light note, then becomes heavy and heated and then ends almost poetically. When a single take scene which continues for such a long while works so well, all you can do is appreciate the acting and the writing that has gone into it. Talking about acting, Michael Fassbender sets the stage on fire with a jaw dropping performance. The film's subject matter and the content being too bold for the consideration of the Academy is the only reason I can think of which can explain why Fassbender didn't get an Oscar nomination for this role. He becomes the character of Bobby Sands through absolutely brutal method acting. He is unbelievably good.Overall I loved the film. The only sort of gripe that I have is with the ending. Although I liked the ending, but I wanted it to be a bit more effective and memorable. But having said that, it is a minor gripe. Hunger is not for everyone, it is disturbing, it is visually explicit and Mcqueen demands patience and attention from the viewer. But if you are prepared for all this, then you are surely going to have a rewarding experience.