Hunger (2008)

[lsanderson]

Michael Fassbender plays Bobby Sands, a member of the Irish Republican Army held in the Maze prison in 1981, in “Hunger.”
The High Cost of Dignity: Recalling the Troubles in Stark Detail
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: March 20, 2009

With calm, deliberate attention — an approach at once compassionate and dispassionate — “Hunger” explores physical extremity and political extremism. In recreating the atmosphere at the Maze prison in Northern Ireland, where Irish Republican Army militants waged a series of protests against the British authorities in 1981, Steve McQueen, a Turner Prize-winning visual artist and first-time filmmaker, finds an almost uncanny balance of violence and quiet. The brutality in the film is pervasive and often stomach turningly graphic, but what is perhaps most unnerving is the tact, patience and care with which Mr. McQueen depicts its causes and effects. More