Pays : film britannique
Genre : Biopic
Durée : 1h40
Date de sortie : 19 novembre 2008
Avec : Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham
Réalisateur : Steve McQueen
Prison de Maze, Irlande du Nord, 1981. Raymond Lohan est surveillant, affecté au sinistre Quartier H où sont incarcérés les prisonniers politiques de l’IRA qui ont entamé le "Blanket and No-Wash Protest" pour témoigner leur colère. Détenus et gardiens y vivent un véritable enfer.
(L'avis exprimé par les rédacteurs de cette rubrique est indépendant du travail et des choix du Jury oecuménique.)
15 mai 2008
Ce film relate quelques épisodes de la lutte menée, dans les prisons d’Irlande du Nord, par les prisonniers politiques pour obtenir justement le statut de prisonnier politique et non celui de criminels de droit commun. Le réalisateur nous montre la "grève des couvertures et de l’hygiène" puis la grève de la faim de Bobby Sands, qui le conduira jusqu’à la mort. Rien ne nous est épargné de cet univers carcéral, par le réalisme et la cruauté des images. La violence des gardiens de prison semble si insoutenable que certains craquent... Et, lorsque s’amorce la longue agonie de Bobby Sands, rien non plus ne nous sera épargné. Etait-ce nécessaire pour nous faire comprendre l’intensité de la lutte républicaine ? Le très long (trop long ?) dialogue entre le héros et l’aumônier de la prison, tentant de le dissuader de s’engager dans cette voie mortelle, est plus intéressant pour nous introduire dans les raisonnements et motivations de ces combattants.
Ce film violent, avec des longueurs appuyées, est-il un film utile ou tombe-t-il dans la complaisance ? Quelques images souvenirs de Bobby Sand et de son enfance permettent d’échapper à l’impression d’étouffement. Elles rejoignent alors certains plans de Ken Loach dans "Le vent se lève". Mais le propos en était bien différent.
15 mai 2008
A gruelling film to watch (and feel). Steve McQueen, has co-written and directed his first feature and drawn his audience into the Troubles of 1981 in Belfast, especially in the Maze prison.
The film is clearly divided into three parts. The first hour focuses on the inmates and the conditions in the Maze and their demands to be treated as political prisoners because of the IRA war rather than as criminal murderers.
There have been many notorious prisons. In recent times we have seen the atrocities at Abu Ghraib in Bagdad and there have been the controversies about Guantanamo Bay. Governments have been stepping up security and detention legislation. But, before that, there was the Maze.
Conditions shown in Hunger are appalling : men stripped, clad in blankets (since they refused to wear criminal garb), isolated in cold cells which they have smeared with excrement in protest. The men have to wash and dress to see their visitors (where a whole lot of smuggling letters and radios goes on). Beating and kicking are rife – and we are not spared any of this detail in the film. The riot squad as well as local guards exercise a shameful brutality – which makes us wonder throughout the film where these people came from, what they were like in real life with their families. Hunger brings this home to us as it opens with a local guard having his breakfast fry, checking the roads and under his car before he goes to work. He laughs with his mates – but then he shows a brutal side with his bloodied knuckles.
The second part of the film is an intense conversation between Bobby Sands and his friend Fr Dominic Moran. Much of it is in a single take, a medium shot as the two men sit at a table and argue the pros and cons of Sands’ decision to go on a hunger strike to death. This demands constant attention as the different points of view are persuasively put.
Then there is the 66 days of dying that Bobby Sands underwent, with explanations of what the hunger did to his internal organs. We can see what it was doing to his exterior, with Michael Fassbender looking frighteningly emaciated, dying with pain and an attempt at dignity.
