HUNGER — CANNES 2008

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Newcomer Steve McQueen (yes that's his name, and there's no relation to the actor) makes his feature debut with a laboriously narrow telling of Irish Republican activist/prisoner Bobby Sands's 1981 hunger strike, from inside Maze prison, protesting the British Government's refusal to recognize IRA members as political prisoners.

 

 

At its center is a 20 minute conversation between an emaciated Sands (fearlessly played by Michael Fassbender) and prison priest Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham) about the morality of the prisoner's decision to commit suicide as an act of protest.

 

 

The riveting theatrically-bound sequence exposes the rest of the film's otherwise limited dramatic reach that imposes austere attention to repellent aspects of the IRA prisoners' "dirty" protest that includes things like smearing feces on the walls of their cells.

 

 

"Hunger" comes off as a piece of stunt filmmaking that places physical reality above historic relevance.

 

The film is as opaque as its title.

 

Not Rated. 92 mins.