Translate a well-known film critic's film review, Peter Travers, who has written film reviews for People and Rolling Stone, also hosted Popcorn, an interview show, and interviewed Michael and James during the XMFC period.
There were better times when audiences wanted to watch tough movies that would push them out of their comfort zone into uncharted territories. Hunger is one such movie. It's a triumph of art that takes us to Metz Prison in District H, Northern Ireland circa 1981, and watching IRA (Irish Republican Army) inmate Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) lead the way will make him scrawny at the age of 27 Dead hunger strike.
The last weeks of Sands' life are well known, as was his purpose: to have IRA prisoners recognized as political prisoners with war-ruled rights. Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher (Mrs. Thatcher), who was only heard in the movie, didn't eat this at all. Director Steve McQueen (no relation to Bullitt Rising Star) is not interested in a biographical journey along bad memories. McQueen, British, black living in Amsterdam, is an award-winning experimental artist making a promising and exciting debut in video and film. His aim was to make a film that you could see, touch, feel, smell.
Hunger is certainly such a movie. Beginning with his script with Irish playwright Enda Walsh, McQueen opens with a prison guard (vividly portrayed by Stuart Graham) leaving home after cleaning his wounded, bleeding knuckles. The guard pulled out a cigarette, checked his car for hidden explosives, and drove to Section H, where he would get more scars from strip checks and beatings. Allusions to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are deliberate. We see prisoners either naked or covered with blankets, refusing to wear prison uniforms. In protest, they plastered the walls with their own feces and let the urine flow out under the door of the cell, which was full of flies and maggots. The film is a punch to the senses, and the way McQueen presents the human body is an arsenal in itself, arguably the last weapon we have to fight back.
Politics emerges during a long debate between Sands and a priest, Dominic Moran (played by the brilliant Liam Cunningham). Beyond that, the film is a series of lingering, scarred images, including the prolonged process of Sands' gradual departure. Fassbender is great, finding the soul of a character who has been stripped of all the resources that make him human. Some critics have accused the film of glorifying Sands as a terrorist. It doesn't. Shockingly neutral and philosophically thought-provoking, The Hunger is an undeniably moving contribution to thinking about what makes us human.
It is not original, nor is it a professional translation, but my translation results are not accepted for unauthorized reprinting.
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