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Dir. Steve McQueen
Rating: 6.8 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
By Ben T. Levy
In 1981, while in prison, IRA volunteer Bobby Sands led a 66-day hunger strike, resulting in his death at age 27. He was fighting for political status for all war crime-prisoners, which would grant a preferable ‘Prisoner of War’ standing to the convicts. As directed by Steve McQueen, the film tells the story of Sands (Michael Fassbender), in a manner of speaking. The first leg documents the general conditions in the prison while in the midst of a “no wash” protest, in which they refused to bathe and were thus beaten into submission and dunked into a murky-pink bathtub by prison guards. The wretched conditions in the prison are amplified by the incredible violence of the prison staff, which the inmates inarguably exacerbated with their constant protests, from shit-painting their cell walls to refusing haircuts.
It takes the film a long time to get into Sands’ story, but when it does, things start to happen quickly, if not entirely comprehensibly. The film grinds you down in several ways: the heavy brogue dialogue can be difficult to decipher and McQueen has paced the grim story so slowly that it’s a battle to maintain mental and emotional investment. One 17-minute scene in which Sands talks with his priest is comprised of one unbroken shot, with barely any color on the screen, a trick that McQueen uses more than once. As a result, the film has the feel of something vaguely experimental, tied to the grim agony of the source material, and ergo almost unwatchable at times.
Equally difficult are the extremely graphic and realistic scenes of Sands’ destroyed body in his final days. Some of the more poetic shots pay off, as when a prisoner ponders a fly crawling in and out of his cell window, or a scene in which shots of an emaciated and retching Sands is superimposed with a noisy flock of crows. It’s an unsettling and oddly moving cinematic gesture. The performances are all solid; as Sands, Fassbender brings proper conviction and anguish. The main problem with the film is that the characters are developed in such measured spurts, without any indication of their background or the history of the movement, there’s little for which a non-Irish audience can grab hold. It assumes an understanding of the cultural and political battleground without offering much context. Despite its stubborn lack of pragmatism, the film remains an authoritatively told portrait of desperation; a snapshot of an emblematic figure at his horrifically defining moment.
The extra features on this stunning Criterion BD release include video interviews with McQueen and Fassbender, a short making of piece and an old BBC TV show about the IRA hunger strikes.
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