Hunger is the first feature film by Turner Prize winning British Video artist Steve McQueen. It took the Caméra d’Or prize at Cannes, honoring outstanding work by a first time director. The film is gut-wrenching, but not without tact. Political themes are deeply explored, but Hunger avoids being overly preachy. The film follows the true story of the last six weeks in the life of inmate Bobby Sands, a hunger striker and member of the IRA. Because it’s based on actual historical events, it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the film does not have a happy ending.
The structure is somewhat atypical. The film opens by following a prison guard through his daily routine, which includes powerful, slow shots of him dipping his bloody knuckles in water after beating inmates. Pensive, nearly silent scenes gradually add together to give the viewer a chilling picture of the facility and the abuses occurring there.
The camera then begins to watch the travails of a new inmate upon his arrival. He is stripped naked, refusing to don a prison uniform as part of a protest to be recognized as a political prisoner. The film continues with wordless long takes. Two prisoners in a tiny cell, walls smeared with human waste. Cleverly discreet exchanges of contraband during family visits. Body cavity searches. Brutal beatings.
More after the jump.
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Veteran documentarian Ken Burns is on the Board of Governors for the Telluride Film Festival. The creator of classic PBS documentary mini-series like The War, Baseball, and Jazz, all of which have a total runtime of many hundreds of minutes, it’s a wonder this guy watches anything other than the archival material he uses to assemble his films. He mentions a film called Hunger by Steve McQueen that’s playing here. No, it’s not the ghost of the Steve McQueen you might be thinking of, this Steve McQueen is a Turner Prize winning British video artist turned filmmaker. A full review of Hunger with an interview is coming soon.
Ken Burns talks Mad Men and David Fincher after the jump.
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Prior to seeing Then She Found Me, I heedlessly referred to it as “that Helen Hunt movie” and cynically prejudged it as yet another celebrity pet project that was sure to be a misguided and perhaps freewheeling bore. Well, I stand corrected: I absolutely love the film, which was written and directed by the Oscar-winning actress (yeah, I forgot she won one, too), adapted quite loosely from Elinor Lipman’s novel of the same name.
And hopefully you won’t hold it against me, especially if you haven’t seen it. The strange thing about seeing a film like Then She Found Me at SXSW is that it doesn’t seem hip enough for the festival, despite the ironic fact that many movies screening this year were about nerds, geeks and other sorts of outcast. Nobody wants to hear you say, “hey, that Helen Hunt movie is actually really good.” Between that and telling people that I love Bette Midler again (not randomly; she’s in the film), I felt like a stranger in a strange world the rest of my time in Austin.
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