Story of a hunger strike

Abstract

September, 1976: members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at Belfast's notorious Maze Prison refuse to wear uniforms. Prison uniforms, the Republicans contended, were for criminals, not for political prisoners. The stand-off lasted 5 years. It began with a so-called blanket protest: Republican prisoners wore blankets rather than the detested uniforms. The “no wash” or “dirty” protest followed. The British Government refused to negotiate—these men weren't politicians, they argued, politicians didn't lay bombs, or track down and murder off-duty prison guards. March, 1980: Bobby Sands, “Officer Commanding” of the Republican contingent in the Maze, begins a hunger strike. It takes him 66 days to die. He is the first of ten prisoners to starve themselves to death. Directed by Turner Prize winning artist Steve McQueen, Hunger stars the excellent Michael Fassbender as Sands. “You want to be a martyr”, growls Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) on hearing the young man's intentions. Perhaps so; the prisoners—long-haired and wrapped in loin-cloths—are certainly dressed for the part. And the ferocious treatment meted out by the authorities rivals anything the ancient Romans had to offer—at one point, riot police form a gauntlet for the prisoners to run, swinging at them with vicious truncheon blows (one officer moves away and weeps). McQueen directs with clear-sighted detachment. There's a serenity that characterises Hunger even as the camera describes scenes of physical and moral chaos. During the dirty protest, two prisoners silently arrange swirls of excrement on their cell walls: they could easily be a brace of Brit-artists moulding a malodorous medium. But Hunger is closer to the sketches of Goya than the contortions of postmodernism. This film is about violence: bodily fluids spill from the battered prisoners; later, Sands' frame grows sunken and ulcerated, its deterioration dispassionately delineated by the prison doctor. A 1975 World Medical Association directive prohibited doctors from force-feeding their patients; Sands' protest went unimpeded by medical staff. In his focus on the power the state can bring to bear on the individual, McQueen surely has half an eye on Guantanamo Bay. It's a compelling and intelligent film, but be warned: with its visceral passages of brutality and degradation, some will find Hunger hard to stomach.