Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbinder) does some holy rolling in Hunger. Die-at convictions
By John Esther
While many people prefer to live on their knees rather than die on their feet – variously bending, bracing, genuflecting, erecting and arching back to any contender in between – there are those who are so hungry for such abstract ideas yet fundamental rights as freedom and justice – real, perceived, imagined, or otherwise – they are willing to starve themselves to death.
Prime examples of non-violent protest against injustice, hunger strikes have been effectively used by disciplined and charismatic leaders to bring attention to a cause through the illustration of conviction.
Mohandas Gandhi held several hunger strikes in early-mid 20th century to protest British rule in India. In 1968 Cesar Chavez went on a 25-day hunger strike to bring attention to unfair labor practices for American farm workers (he held several fasts, too). This summer Tibetans who were denied entry into Tibet started a hunger strike in Nepal against China’s occupation of Tibet until they were hospitalized by authorities.
Then there was Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbinder), the determined protagonist in “war artist” Steve McQueen’s topnotch film about a man railroaded into a 14-year sentence at HM Prison Maze, or Long Kesh.
Taking the trouble of bringing Sands live to the big screen, while the film contains flashbacks into Sands idyllic and formidable childhood as someone who discerned early how he was considered second class in the eyes of occupying forces, the film focuses on life inside the world during The Troubles in Maze Prison, Northern Ireland, where Sands and other “Special Category Status” men are taking their will by their stomachs and hands with hunger strikes in 1981.
Despite bleak circumstances the prisoners are determined to live by their own rules despite the cement block cages where they resist. Maggots infest uneaten food while prisoners fingerpaint their fecal matter on walls, pour urine into the hallway for some official to mop, refuse to wash, and engage in other self abuses in the name of resistance.
Guards like Ray Lohan (Stuart Graham) do not mind the prisoners suffering so long as it is on the terms of power (akin to suicide watch on death row). To the guards these republicans are terrorists, not prisoners of war, and treating them as such is standard operating procedure (akin to Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib). Brutality is a daily ritual. The real battle is to see who gets to exercise and execute that brutality.
However, although McQueen is sympathetic to their plight, this is not a lopsided pro-IRA film. It could be argued that the tactics the prisoners use fit into the guards’ preconceptions that these people are animals. The madness lies in their methods.
Assuring to recognize that Sands was not a one-man army, McQueen introduces Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) whom upon arrival immediately joins the so-called blanket-protest where prisoners refused to wear uniforms. Davey shares a hellhole with fellow republican prisoner Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon). Gerry drives Davey through the daily routine, showing him how to smuggle items and exchange “comms” (communications) with visitors and passing them Sands during Sunday Mass.
In what seems an attempt at civil accord prisoners are offered civilian clothes. The symbolic gesture of the clothes is that the republicans are prisoners of war, not prisoners guilty of crimes, which is a legitimate in many cases. (Remember The Hurricane?)
Too bad the clothes are as silly as a goofy golfer and the prisoners are not having it. Looks like riot time. The prisoners destroy their new clean cells. Shields and clubs are called in. What ensues is an array of violence that gets your indignation up, and then your anger, before making you nauseous. It is sort of like, but for different reasons, when you watch Alex (Roddy McDowell) in A Clockwork Orange: you are pissed he is enjoying the violence but then you start to feel his nausea as he/we are confronted by human(un)kind barrage of violent insults.
The crackdown is the toughest scene in the film to stomach but it is not the only one. Not for the squeamish, it is hard to imagine any film this year capturing such extreme violence on such an intimate level as Hunger (though Funny Games comes to mind).
Surprise, surprise, violence is met with more violence. Thanks to the clampdown, the guards are no longer safe. Raymond is shot dead in one of the coldest executions caught on film this year.
But Raymond’s death rings hollow in the grand scheme of things. He is not a man of power and his death has had little political effect (though I imagine the guards may have eased their disciplinary stance).
Now is the time of internal reflection and discipline – the kinds no oppressor can force on the oppressed. To make it clear what happens next a conversation between Sands and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham) ensues where Sands announces a hunger strike to the death. In an attempt to change Sands Moran offers up a morality the 27-year-old can swallow.
The strike goes on. Bobby Sands meets his fate.
As Irish history goes, Sands was no new radical when it came to hunger strikes. Fasting was a form of protest dating back to pre-Christian Ireland. St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was rumoured to use hunger strikes as well. Hunger strikes were picked up again in the early 20th century by Irish republicans during the Anglo-Irish war in the late 1910s to early 1920s with thousands of IRA prisoners participating. In the 1940s three more people died of a hunger strike. After a hiatus, the hunger strike was revived in the 1970s with the Provisional IRA which then lead to the great hunger strikes at Maze Prison.
It is a shame McQueen spent much more time covering Sand’s long distance running days and memories to the point of gross poetic license (how would anyone know what Sands’ final thoughts were during his 66-day hunger strike) rather than put the Sands martyrdom further in the context of Ireland’s political history. While the British-led guards were likely as cruel (at the least) as the film suggests, and the IRA protesters were determined in their convictions (not always principled) the hate and anger between the two factions is slightly reduced to a typical, albeit viciously brutal, movie about guards and prisoners not getting along. Unless viewers know the history they may be perplexed about all the fuss.
Contrary to what many reactionary critics across the pond will contend, this slight lack of historical and political context is the only significant fault in this superbly directed, written and performed picture. Fassbinder’s transformation is transparent, as good as anybody’s I have seen this year, including Sean Penn in Milk and Michael Rapaport in Special.
As many Americans embark on this season of gluttony and good cheer, looking toward the light at then end of eight years of political tunnel vision -- where sound economics derailed, war prevailed forward into deadly head on crashes -- McQueen’s Hunger is as stark, brutal, unappetizing and relentlessly pessimistic as those superior historical pictures. When you know there is no hope for the historical characters in a film -- and this is not a Hollywood movie so there none here – there is little else to do than sit back and taste the misery.
