mardi 2 décembre 2008

Unforgettable


On Sunday I saw Hunger. It was grey and cold, I was moody so it sounded like a good idea at the time.


What a movie! It's both gruesome and stunning. Steve McQueen never made a film before but he definitely knows his way around a camera! He teaches a lesson of cinema here and didn't win the camera d'or (the prize rewarding a debut film) in Cannes for nothing! I tell you, a talented film maker is born.


The actor who plays Bobby Sands, Michael Fassbender, has an incredible screen presence that gets more and more palpable as he loses more and more weight, but to me it's all about the scenario, the mise en scène and the cinematography.
They made some almost unbearable scenes watchable. I know that some people think it's too arty given the topic, but I was glad for that artistry, especially since it doesn't soften the horror, the raw violence displayed on screen. I don't like films whose only goal is to shock and hurt the audience (Here I'm thinking of Hanecke and his La Pianiste). Hunger is intense and hard to take for it doesn't spare the viewers the most awful details about the way IRA prisoners were treated by the guards in the Maze, about the dirty strike and the hunger strike, and about Bobby's final death, yet it remains a beautiful work of art. Even shit and piss end up looking beautiful. Can you imagine that? Some contemporary so-called artists make utter crap and call it art, this film maker turns supposed shit into art. McQueen is an alchemist!

However, the central piece is neither about prisoners being regularly beaten up and living among feces and worms, nor about Bobby starving himself to death, it's a 15 minutes conversation between Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunnigham who plays someone working in "the business of soul", that is the prison's priest(see the picture above). It's dialectical but it could be an interior monologue as well. That scene is a purple passage, almost a sequence shot. Brilliant! There's even humour in the scene, as Bobby, who's used to smoking the Bible pages, nicks the priest's cigarettes to spare the Book of John!
I guess it's easier to see and enjoy the film for what it is, when you don't have any personal baggage concerning IRA; some British people already resent Hunger, accusing Steve McQueen of propaganda, but I didn't take it that way. The film maker doesn't support Bobby's cause or actions. Yes there's the scene I mentioned above, in which he shows him arguing and justifying his choices, including the hunger strike, and I guess we could call it apologetic, but Bobby is confronted with the priest's rhetoric then, so it's pretty balanced. We mostly see a desperate man trying to give a meaning to his life.

I admit that "the magic of cinema" tends to turn any lead character into a sort of hero, especially when such character is played by a handsome guy who ends up looking Christ-like because of the hunger strike. But it isn't a biopic, and symbolism matters more than who Bobby Sands really was, more than his agony. By the way, the film doesn't begin with Bobby, whose introduction happens much later, but with other characters, first and foremost a guard with injured knuckles.
To me it doesn't say "look at this man who is a true martyr", it's a film showing tormented souls, showing what human beings are capable to do to themselves–and with "themselves" I mean their own person but also their close relations and their kind– and the horrible situations they can find themselves stuck in, for various reasons that they all might find right at the time. And that's a reflection that we need nowadays more than ever.

One scene that truly moves me shows a young guard finally breaking down as his colleagues unleash violence and go wild on the prisoners. It points out that crimes against humanity destroy the torturers too. It goes well with the symbolism of Bobby Sands destroying his body through hunger strike.
The film maker tells a story that obviously left a mark on him as a British man, but he doesn't really take sides and he doesn't shy away from the violence of the IRA militia when he shows one of the guards being killed by a bullet in the head, while he is visiting his senile mother in an old people's home, his blood splashing on her forgetful face, his head falling dead onto her still lap. A shocking scene too.

Eventually if McQueen had an agenda, it isn't about glorifying Bobby Sands, but it might be about putting recent events into perspective(Abu Graib, Gunatanamo...), and it's pretty much about addressing to She whose voice is heard several times during the film, but who is never there of course.
As for me, I wouldn't mind if Margaret Thatcher were forced into watching Hunger...

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire