Hunger (The Criterion Collection)

In Northern Ireland’s Maze prison in 1981, twenty-seven-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners, rather than as ordinary criminals. With Hunger, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience. Stills from Hunger Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, Hunger is an unflinching, transcendent depiction of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands’ final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror.

film history, and appears to have spent time with the works of Alan Clarke (specifically Elephant) and Stanley Kubrick (see A Clockwork Orange), who share his fascination with the abuse of power, the horror of sudden violence, and the splendor of the static shot. Even after moving the prisoners, the mistreatment continues, so they step up their campaign. It's no way to live, and it isn't easy to watch, but McQueen provides a reprieve through Sands's riveting conversation with Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham), a scene his backers pressured him to cut, but the filmmaker wisely stood firm In his director's statement, McQueen says he wanted to "show what it was like to see, hear, smell, and touch in the H-Block." Because he avoids editorializing, it's as easy to condemn his subjects for their naïve idealism as it is to admire their singularity of purpose. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Guard Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham) serves as a guide into the hell of Belfast's Maze Prison, circa 1981, where Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender in a remarkable performance) and his IRA brethren hunker down in blankets, since they refuse to don uniforms and can't wear their own clothes. Art background aside, McQueen clearly knows his U.K. With the exception of Julian Schnabel, visual artists have had a tough time at the cinema, but like the American painter before him, Britain's Steve McQueen beat the odds with the award-winning Hunger. They dump food on the floor, smear waste on the walls, and sleep with maggots in protest against their conditions. In his visceral depiction of a political hunger strike, McQueen emphasizes specific moments over plot mechanics.