SOME HISTORY, SOME POLITICS AND SOME "HUNGER"

If you looked at the summary of this film and said “God no, not another film about The Troubles!” I could actually relate to that. But if you want to watch one and decide to make it this one, you actually wouldn’t be doing that badly for yourself.
Hunger, is another true story (you may have noticed I have a soft spot for those). Through the eyes of Davey (played by Brian Milligan), a new IRA prisoner in Maze prison, we witness the “Blanket Protests” during which Republican prisoners led by Bobby Sands (played rather superbly by Michael Fassbander) protested in various ways to gain political status (one example is that since as political prisoners they would have been allowed their own clothes, the prisoners attired themselves only in their prison issue blankets and refused to wear prison uniforms – hence the name “Blanket Protests”). The various forms of non-cooperation and dissidence culminated in a hunger strike that led to the death of some of the protesters, including Bobby Sands himself.
Now once again I have to tell you, this film is not for the faint of heart. The film is, by nature, very political, and discusses the morality of the protests and the motivation of dying for a cause very effectively. But it is far from being all ideas and “heroics”. You will watch the prisoners and the guards “face off” in all its terrible glory. The film skimps on no detail, including the details of the protests (and believe me the Republican prisoners were “imaginative” ),the hunger strike and its physical effects on the strikers.
But if you force yourself past this undoubtedly disturbing side of the film, you find yourself faced with a fascinating narrative where many forms of hunger are discussed. Of course there is the physical hunger, predominant in the film but also the hunger for political rights, glory, righteousness… But at the end, my feeling was that the greatest “Hunger” was one that is not mentioned at all but to my mind was painfully present throughout the film : the hunger for peace. A thought-provoking and sensitive film you should not miss…