2008 Directed by Steve McQueen
The story of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who led the 1981 hunger strike in which Republican prisoners tried to win political status. It dramatises events in the Maze prison in the six weeks prior to Sands’ death.
大绝食, Глад, Hlad, רעב, Éhség, HUNGER／ハンガー 静かなる抵抗, შიმშილი, 헝거, Głód, Fome, Голод, Açlık, 饥饿, 大絕食, 飢餓宣言
France
AustraliaMA15+
Spain
Ireland15A
UK15
USA
Sweden15
Denmark15
Germany16
South Korea18
Australia
Denmark
France
Germany
Ireland
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
UK
USA
Usually I need an emotional connection to be drawn into a film with as harrowing a subject as Hunger has. Once again McQueen proves that with his detached, clinical but unflinching style he still manages to achieve just that despite the distance between the audience and the film.
From the get go it is clear that McQueen will pull no punches. The prison and its inhabitants are gritty and rough. The violence is brutal and yet McQueen manages to inject humanity into both prisoners and guards. He doesn't seem to want to make a statement, he seems to be more interested in documenting a very troubled era in a nation's history.
At the centre of this is Bobby Sands (a…
Very little dialogue, the visuals vividly speak for themselves! Startling with its brave portrayal of brutality and inhumanity! I winced with every blow that struck flesh! The winces soon gave way to tears as I witnessed a human life waste away pound by pound until he was so emaciated he was nothing but skin and bones!
A gut wrenching experience!
Naughty Approved!
Steve McQueen's feature film debut is a brutally intense, downright disturbing & extremely upsetting cinema covering the infamous Irish hunger strike of 1981. And while it makes up for a very difficult sitting due to its graphic depiction of the brutality that was inflicted on the prisoners, it also marks a terrific start to the directional career of one of modern cinema's boldest new filmmakers.
Set in Northern Ireland around the early 1980s, Hunger explores the life in Maze Prison where Republican inmates are protesting to regain their political status which was revoked by the British government a few years ago. After depicting much of the gruesome torture, the plot finally focuses on the events leading to the 1981 IRA hunger…
This is one of the very best films I've seen in a good while. It was Steve McQueen's debut? Fuck, I can't believe it. It's a beautiful, thought-provoking, haunting and brutal film. And I mean BRUTAL.
If, for some reason you are not yet convinced that Fassbender is one of the best actors working right now, watch this film and you will be among the doubting no more. He delivers a performance that should and will be remembered forever. Looks like he almost lost as much weight as Bale did for The Machinist. Ah, maybe not quite, but it's scary as hell.
There is a conversation that takes place around the middle of the film and goes on for almost half an hour. And it's gripping. It's nearly uncut, too. I think there is a shot that lasts about 16 minutes uncut. Amazing. Just do yourself a favour and watch this film.
This review may contain spoilers.
Hunger wasn’t among those kinds of movies where the politics is all over the place. Steve McQueen is one hell of a talent in our era whose body of work tells us right away what the angle is taken, what the gist is. Hunger is like 12 Years A Slave in its explicit content, but has less to offer in its narrative. The politics is easy to digest and can reach a wider audience.
Take it this way: Three stories, of an officer (Stuart Graham), an inmate (Brian Milligan) and Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) himself suffering and affected under the hunger strike, one way or another. You might get confused why Sands hasn’t appeared yet…
For the last 5-10 years, the film industry has put a greater emphasis on black creators telling black stories, which I think is a great starting point for diversity in storytelling. But sometimes it seems to get lost that different perspectives will have an impact on ANY story being told. Many of my non-white friends and co-workers feel pressured to stay in a narrow lane, and I hope in the future more of them will have the freedom to pursue projects that are thematically important to them, regardless of if the story is directly about their culture. Anyways i'm Irish and watched this about a week ago, it really stuck with me, and I have Steve McQueen to thank.
I don’t understand why he didn’t eat, kinda dumb. It’s literally so easy.
8.3 / 10
British artist Steve McQueen set out to make a movie about IRA martyr Bobby Sands and his fatal 1981 hunger strike. He had plenty of film models to work from when it comes to historical docudrama. A good example could have been 2008's other movie about imprisoned terrorists, The Baader-Meinhof Complex. It's a solid film that mixes a assiduous compilation of the exploits of West Germany's Red Army Faction with enough intimate moments with the members to give them shading and depth, but the main focus is documenting the motivations and actions of the group. McQueen goes in a completely different, and vastly more satisfying, direction by ignoring big picture questions and a blow-by-blow documentation of the "troubles." Instead, McQueen…
