Cast

Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Brian Mulligan, Liam McMahon

Film description

Hunger is one of the greatest surprises of last year, an extraordinary film by an unknown debutant, Steve McQueen. In 1981, the English prison guards work hard to earn the image of butchers. The IRA fighters kept in prison are methodically deprived of their humanity, tortured in simple and refined ways, sometimes with a bludgeon, sometimes with sneering laughter in the face. The naked, tormented prisoners fight to stand upright: they protest, refuse to wear prison uniforms, purposefully neglect personal hygiene, finally they go on hunger strike. The first victim is Bobby Sands.

Without unnecessary words, without feature additions, McQueen shows the shameful, rarely disclosed facts of England's recent history. In the film there is no rhetoric, no political discussions about IRA and its operations. Hunger is about violence, about crime approved by authorities, about the banality of evil born when a man feels just an element in the system. On the other side of the prison front there are those who struggle to remain faithful to themselves. Steadfast losers, dirty, skinny, imprisoned in their tortured, suffering bodies. What does their gesture serve? Why do they choose to die? As a testimony. This does sound pompous, but this time, it is true.

Jakub Socha