Hunger

This 2008 Irish film written and directed by Steve McQueen, not that one, is one of the most harrowing, visually uncomfortable movies I have seen.

Based on the hunger strikes of the Irish Republican Army that led to the deaths of nine strikers including the leader and first striker Bobby Sands the movie is a brutal look at the event.

I remember clearly this happening when I was in high school. I did not understand why anyone would go to such an extreme. What I know now is that event was precipitated by the 1976 decision by the British Government to remove Political Status to the IRA. By doing so captured prisoners would therefore be treated as regular prisoners, or worse terrorists.

It is hard to imagine a Westernized country with such hatred and anger over a dispute between Catholics and Protestants. Still one should remember the anti Catholic bigotry in this country for a great part of our history.

The movie shows the incredible cruelty of the British Prison system to these men. Beatings were just the beginning of the torture given. One has to remember that in most cases however, the prisoners were people accused of and in most cases convicted and admitted to terrible crimes which led to the deaths of many innocent civilians.

Two wrongs do not make a right. Seeing prisoners spread feces on their wall, being beaten, probed, violated and then watching them make a decision to starve themselves to bring attention to their cause is never comfortable. This movie is not a comfortable one to watch. Watching Sands die, and the horrible effects of the starvation is hard to watch.

It is hard to imagine this is not in the Middle East or China. This was in England, civilized England that this took place.

One of the paradoxes of Western civilization, and especially the United States, is how over the post World War II history we have picked and chosen what dictators we supported and what ones we felt were terrible and had to be replaced. It is factual to say that we seemed to have a much easier time with practices that are considered cruel and inhumane when performed by our allies and or those that had something that we wanted, be it a port, or access, or of course oil.

I remember when I was in college having an IRA flag and honestly not realizing all that it meant on both sides. Still supporting dictators has been a common practice in this country and one can draw lines between what happend in the IRA prisons and what happens today in Middle Eastern prisons and perhaps in the days of Bush/Cheney at Guantanomo.

No matter how you feel about the treatment of prisoners, political, terroists, or otherwise, this movie might give you a brief glimpse of what might be done to those prisoners even in the West. It should, hopefully give us pause.

This movie received great reviews. I cannot call it a great movie. I will say it is a movie you will not soon forget.