Although the life and death of Bobby Sands was previously depicted in 1996's Some Mothers Son (which put Dame Helen Mirren centre stage as his mother) and 2001's H3, Steve McQueen's Hunger, coming with Cannes prize-winning approval, is likely to be the definitive Sands movie.
But, those looking for an overview of the Troubles or an insight into the psychology of martyrdom may feel disappointed by the film's decision to go for a visceral gut-punch, focussing on the here-and-now brutality of life as an enemy of the state.
Rigidly structured, Hunger opens with prisoner Davey Gillen (Milligan) entering Maze and joining the Blanket and No Wash protest of his fellow IRA detainees. In an excrement-smeared cell, Gerry Campbell (McMahon) shows him how to survive the squalid conditions and harsh treatment.
Act 2 follows Bobby Sands (Fassbender), first seen suffering a violent scrub down, and instigating a riot that leads to violent retaliation by the authorities. Calling on sympathetic priest Moran (Cunningham), Sands declares the prisoners have elected to hunger strike until their demands for political prisoner status are met.
Act 3 depicts Sands' painfully slow death by starvation.
In these post-Guantanamo times, Hunger is a potent reminder that the UK prison system has a recent history of human rights abuses, not omitting the damaging effect government approved brutality has on those charged with dispensing punishment, most notably in Stuart Graham's sad-faced prison warden.
McQueen's chilly, severe visuals convey the prisoners' despair, mute torment (the first and third acts are nigh-on wordless) and terror as they face an intransigent regime headed by an unmovable Thatcher government: their torture by riot police is shattering to watch.
Following this, the already famed 22-minute single-shot scene of Sands and Moran arguing the morality of terrorism, suicide and martyrdom is a relief.
But this excellently played centrepiece fails to illuminate Sands or his motives, and his first appearance - Christ-like long hair and beard, towel wrapped around his waist, suffering abuse at the hands of prison guards - is going to rile some audiences.
Plus, a horrific hit on a prison official aside, McQueen and co-writer Enda Walsh largely ignore the IRA atrocities that made the public sympathetic to Thatcher's bullishness, or that Sands' decision places him in the same sphere as Al-Qaeda suicide bombers (a murderous riot broke out on the news of Sands' death).
But McQueen has David Cronenberg's talent for squirmy body horror, focussing on the permanent knuckle scabs of Grahams self-loathing prison guard, the use of any orifice to smuggle contraband, and most obviously Sands' agonising demise, his emaciated body blighted with suppurating sores and requiring a frame so bedsheets don't smother his brittle ribcage.
Ambitious, technically excellent in its documentary-like immediacy, and played with true conviction by Fassbender (whose weight-loss is enough to make you wince), Hunger nonetheless leaves the brain undernourished.
Rob Daniel
