{"id":3425,"date":"2008-10-19T23:58:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-19T22:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=3425"},"modified":"2008-10-20T19:37:18","modified_gmt":"2008-10-20T18:37:18","slug":"lff-2008-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2008\/10\/19\/lff-2008-day-5\/","title":{"rendered":"LFF 2008: Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today there was a Time Out<\/a>\u00a0gala screening<\/a> of Hunger<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0which is one of the highlights of this year’s London Film Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is the debut\u00a0feature\u00a0film of artist\u00a0Steve McQueen<\/a>\u00a0and explores the\u00a01981 IRA hunger strike<\/a>,\u00a0one of the key episodes of\u00a0The Troubles<\/a>\u00a0in Northern Ireland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This involved a group of\u00a0IRA<\/a>\u00a0prisoners in\u00a0the Maze<\/a>\u00a0led by\u00a0Bobby Sands<\/a>\u00a0go on a protracted hunger strike in order to pressurize the British government to recognise them as political prisoners.<\/p>\n

What is interesting is the way the film explores the hellish physical and mental toll this took on the prisoners and guards at the Maze prison.<\/p>\n

I didn’t feel I was being lectured to about the wider politics of the Troubles, but rather being forced to confront the sharp end of the conflict as well as the lengths humans will go to in extreme situations.<\/p>\n

There are some remarkable performances: Michael Fassbender<\/a>\u00a0as the stubborn and \u00a0obsessive Sands, Liam Cunningham<\/a>\u00a0as the priest who questions the strike and Stuart Graham<\/a> as a prison guard are just some of the excellent performers who don’t sound a single false note.<\/p>\n

Although when it screened at Cannes earlier this year<\/a>, there were the usual dumb headlines about a ‘controversial’ film about the IRA<\/a>, but you shouldn’t be put off by the historical context.<\/p>\n

Although the modern history of Northern Ireland has inspired some woefully misguided films (A Prayer for the Dying<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Devil\u2019s Own<\/a>\u00a0spring to mind), what’s interesting is that McQueen manages to takes inside the insane brutality of the conflict by focusing on the particular situation and environment inside the Maze.<\/p>\n

Some sequences are tough to watch: the prison guards getting rough with inmates, the prisoners smearing their walls with excrement or two people simply debating the reasons for the hunger strike, but all are handled with an incredible amount of finesse and skill.<\/p>\n

One scene in particular is stomach turning, but somehow all the more effective for showing the depths to which some sank during this period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is not a partisan film, although it is fair to say that the focus is more on Sands, particularly the coda of the film which I think\u00a0some have misread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Within the confines of the prison – and some sequences outside – the chilling atmosphere of the time is brilliantly evoked through some superb widescreen lensing by\u00a0Sean Bobbit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sound too is well crafted, with little in the way of a conventional score and a lot of effects coming from the prisoners themselves, particularly the banging from inside the cells which at certain points is overwhelming.<\/p>\n

Despite the potential pitfalls that surround any film about The Troubles, this is an audacious work more in the tradition of Alan Clarke’s\u00a0Elephant<\/a>\u00a0or Paul Greengrass’\u00a0Bloody Sunday<\/a>\u00a0– boldly intelligent examinations of a dark and complex conflict. \u00a0<\/p>\n

I wrote about Hunger in greater detail<\/a> after I saw it last month and since then I have heard McQueen express his sense of being an outsider coming into the British film industry from the art world.<\/p>\n

On The Guardian’s Film Weekly podcast recently he told Jason Solomons<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I just wish there was more …passion with the film world here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe people are too inhibited.<\/p>\n

Maybe because I’m an outsider who came inside and I see how the house is operating and I think ‘bloody hell’. \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the evidence of this film we need more passionate outsiders like Steve McQueen, because this is a stunning piece of work that deserves as wide an audience as possible.<\/p>\n

Check out the trailer here:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hunger<\/strong> opens in UK cinemas on October 31st<\/em><\/p>\n

> Hunger at the LFF<\/a>
\n> Official UK site for Hunger<\/a>
\n> Steve McQueen<\/a> at the IMDb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today there was a Time Out\u00a0gala screening of Hunger\u00a0which is one of the highlights of this year’s London Film Festival.\u00a0 It is the debut\u00a0feature\u00a0film of artist\u00a0Steve McQueen\u00a0and explores the\u00a01981 IRA hunger strike,\u00a0one of the key episodes of\u00a0The Troubles\u00a0in Northern Ireland. This involved a group of\u00a0IRA\u00a0prisoners in\u00a0the Maze\u00a0led by\u00a0Bobby Sands\u00a0go on a protracted hunger strike in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,20,38],"tags":[513,467,595],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}