Hunger visto dal Guardian

Una delle recensioni più brevi, ma forse tra le più incisive...

Hunger

4 stars Cannes film festival

Peter Bradshaw
Friday May 16, 2008
The Guardian

Now that Martin McGuinness is doing grinning photo-ops alongside Ian Paisley, the world of the hunger strikes and dirty protests of the early 1980s seems a very long time ago. Steve McQueen's film Hunger painfully and powerfully re-enacted the Maze prison campaign and made Cannes festivalgoers live through the ordeal of hunger striker Bobby Sands, played uncompromisingly by Michael Fassbender.

It delivered a profound shock, not least the shock of recognising how much has changed, and how in our era of suicide bombings, the debate over terrorism has changed radically.

Hunger is extreme cinema for an extreme subject. It is outstandingly made; long wordless sequences are composed with judgment and flair and expository dialogue scenes are confidently positioned. It surely confirms McQueen as a real film-maker.

The full nauseous horror of the dirty protest is unflinchingly addressed by McQueen's camera. There are long, unhurried shots of the endless prison corridor, with swags of urine seeping from under each cell door. You can feel the prisoners breeding their hate and rage like bacilli in a gigantic Petri dish. The scenes of brutality are almost unwatchable.

Hunger is raw, powerful film-making and an urgent reminder of this uniquely ugly, tragic and dysfunctional period in British and Irish history.