Movie Review: Hunger

Hunger is one of those European movies. You know the ones. The ones were you have a continuous shot for 5 minutes of a guy cleaning a hallway. Or two people talking. And the camera never moves. Some might call it pretentious, and though it certainly is, it also creates a kind of contemplative reverence which is quite the thing if you're in the mood. But I should start at the beginning.

Hunger is about some hunger strikes in an Irish gaol a while back. Or at least so the backstory filled in at the end will have you believe. Of course, the politics take a backseat to the director's obvious fascination with what "the human spirit" is. Essentially, he's giving us the same kind of prisoner abuse scenes that we've seen dozens of times, in the Ministry of Love as well as Over the Cuckoo's Nest and on the Green Mile as much as at Shawshank. The difference here, and it is a big one, is that it is the prison guards who have their will broken. The prisoners are one huge, monolithic band of Jesus lookalikes, and their solidarity with one another, and incredible willingness to work together, are what push many of their captors over the brink. However, this is no comic caper. Despite the director being called Steve McQueen, this is not The Great Escape. There are no harebrained schemes, no crazy plots, and certainly not the kind of smug triumphs that Andy Dufresne could hold over his stuffy old prison warden.

Rather, by basing his story on actual events, and sticking close both to these events and stark, gritty reality, McQueen makes us believe in his vision.

He shows us a prison not overrun with sadistic guards and psycho wardens, but full of regular people who visit their mothers, have a hard time hurting one another unless in fits of anger or pain, and find a refuge and strength in the kind of monastic existence that gaol requires. There is an especially touching scene with a fly. For perhaps as much as two minutes, a prisoner plays gently with a fly on a grating. Your first impulse is perhaps he will eat it, or some other madcap thing will happen. This must be a setup, right? But no. He plays with it, gently trying to coax it onto his hand, for nothing more than to feel the touch of another living creature. This isn't madness or some kind of sensory-deprivation symptom. Everyone has looked at flies at one time or another with interest, however slight. McQueen's movie is not about explosions and explosive sex. Rather, it finds wonder in the things that, for most of us, have long ago faded into the grey blur. Watch Hunger when you're stressed out and overexcited.