{"id":3771,"date":"2009-12-23T20:30:58","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T01:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=3771"},"modified":"2010-01-12T10:59:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T15:59:26","slug":"hunger-2008-steve-mcqueen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/3771","title":{"rendered":"Hunger (2008, Steve McQueen)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s Steve McQueen the artist who everyone pretended to have heard of when this came out, a naked Warholian who recreates Buster Keaton stunts and projects them onto art gallery walls, not Steve McQueen the actor who everyone has actually heard of, who jumped a nazi barbed-wire fence on a motorcycle.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/hunger2.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>For a director who talks up innovation and rulebreaking, he&#8217;s made a rather classic-looking film, with much attention paid to capturing beautiful shots in what should be an ugly story &#8211; a hunger strike unto death by physically abused political prisoners inside the shit-smeared walls of a British prison.  I expected more subjective views, more filmic art-stuff a la <em><a href=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/456\">Diving Bell and the Butterfly<\/a><\/em> (also by a former art-gallery sensationalist) but it seems most of  the experimentalism was narrative, and who knows if that&#8217;s due to McQueen or experienced co-screenwriter Enda Walsh.<\/p>\n<p>I ultimately got less, narratively and emotionally, than from the more conventional IRA\/prison flick <em>In the Name of the Father<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Extremely-long-take centerpiece, in which priest Liam Cunningham (<a href=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/274\">Wind That Shakes The Barley<\/a>, The Mummy 3) fails to talk Bobby (Michael Fassbender, the <a href=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/3021\">Inglorious Basterds<\/a> brit who gets shot up in the basement bar):<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/hunger1.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Prison guard who gets his own arc, ending with execution in his senile mum&#8217;s lap:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/hunger4.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Another prison guard, who does not enjoy beating prisoners:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/hunger5.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Secret messages:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/hunger6.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s Steve McQueen the artist who everyone pretended to have heard of when this came out, a naked Warholian who recreates Buster Keaton stunts and projects them onto art gallery walls, not Steve McQueen the actor who everyone has actually heard of, who jumped a nazi barbed-wire fence on a motorcycle. For a director who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[369,102,13,220],"class_list":["post-3771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2000s","tag-britain","tag-criterion","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3771"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4008,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions\/4008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}