Film Review | Hunger (2008)

It's easy in many ways to tell that Hunger is the work of Steve McQueen, the director who brought us Shame: a captivating central performance from Michael Fassbender; a subject which deals with humanity at its most raw and vulnerable, but also at its most destructive and savage; and a directorial panache which makes the film at times feel less like a feature and more like an art installation. But it's also easy to tell that this was made earlier than McQueen's modern masterpiece - the hallmarks are there, but the director's approach occasionally alienates a little too much.

Central to Hunger is its crowning glory, a scene well over twenty minutes in length featuring only Bobby Sands (Fassbender) and a Catholic priest (Liam Cunningham) talking over the hunger strike Sands intends to take as an inmate of the Maze Prison during the Troubles. Featuring a single shot around seventeen minutes long, each man on either side of a table in an empty room, this is McQueen laying his cards out on the table in bold and uncompromising fashion. The entire sequence is note perfect, the two actor glancing off each other to perfection with Fassbender in particular bringing an intensity so brazen and enigmatic its impossible to resist, and the script delivering some of the most powerful moments of the whole film.

Either side of this extraordinary middle section, things are still undoubtedly impressive but feel less successful. The opening half an hour of the film presents a patchwork of events from both inmates' and prison officers' lives at Maze, offering little in the way of narrative structure or indeed exposition. If you're not already familiar with this particular period during the Troubles, McQueen offers little to educate you, opting instead to show you his artistic vision of life in Maze Prison which regularly impresses and confounds in equal measure. Fassbender's main character isn't introduced until around a third of the way in, a bold decision which ultimately works but is likely to be at least somewhat bewildering on a first viewing.

McQueen ends his film by again opting for images rather than a traditionally structured narrative, presenting us with some of the film's most harrowing moments as we witness Sands' deterioration and decay through Fassbender's astounding physical commitment to the role. Once again, the finished product feels more like an art installation than a feature film at several points, and whilst the film here is regularly striking, there are bold decisions made by the director which don't always pay off. McQueen undoubtedly has justification for showing us an extended sequence of a prison officer dousing a corridor with cleaning fluid, then sweeping the fluid from one end of the corridor to the other, but what his reasons are just don't feel clear enough to justify such a prolonged and, frankly, uninteresting moment.

Hunger is a film to admire and appreciate artistically, but not necessarily to enjoy in the same way as McQueen's later effort Shame. The director's panache with crafting powerful images is never in any doubt, but at the same time this feels a little too esoteric and metaphorical meaning Hunger often treads a fine line of accessibility. That said, as directorial debut's go, this is one of the most powerful and promising the 21st Century has seen so far.

8/10

Film Review | Shame (2012)

Michael Fassbender has emerged over the last five years or so as a serious talent to watch, bringing to life such memorable characters as Lieutenant Archie Hicox in Inglourious Basterds and more recently the unsettling android David in Prometheus. But to truly see why Fassbender is one of the most outstanding contemporary actors out there, you need look no further than his astonishing performance in Shame.

By the end of the film's opening, wordless sequence, Fassbender has expertly set out his stall, crafting the character of Brandon Sullivan sublimely through suggestion, expression and an intensity that only the very purest acting talent can muster. Brandon is seen making eye contact with an unnamed woman on the New York subway. The subtle flirting is traded back and forth, escalated little by little. And then things suddenly change, the woman sensing threat and becoming flustered before quickly escaping the train carriage at the next stop. Brandon pursues, no longer a man flirting with a woman but a predator desperately attempting to track his prey. The woman eludes him, and Brandon transforms again: a frustrated child who knows he has lost the game and momentarily bewildered, before heading back crestfallen to board the train once again. All the while this is intercut with candid snippets of Brandon's daily routine; his well-to-do but solitary existence in a modern, clean-cut apartment which belies the character's true life as a sex addict.

It's a performance which Fassbender sustains and develops masterfully throughout the film. Brandon is a complex character, simultaneously repulsive and genuinely sympathetic, repressed yet explosive. This is a character more intricate than the entire cast of other films put together, and yet Fassbender's execution of the part is so perfectly balanced between the excruciatingly subtle and overwhelmingly palpable as to appear effortless. It's a performance around which the rest of Shame is built, but the combined skill of both Fassbender as performer and McQueen as director means that it never threatens to overpower the film's many other superb elements.

Under the direction of another, Shame could at any point very easily slip into the exploitative and tasteless realm of cinema, but McQueen is so firmly in control of what he is creating this never even threatens to  happen. His depiction of the sordid elements of Brandon's life is regularly graphic, but never pornographic. A great deal of the sexual activity McQueen shows us is devoid of sexiness, instead manifesting a combination of Brandon's hedonism, dependency and self-loathing. The only time the director allows sex on screen to titillate is during Brandon's seduction of co-worker Marianne (Nicole Beharie), directly reflecting the character's desire to begin a genuine romantic relationship. Without a doubt, McQueen's command over his film is absolute and expert at every moment.

Carey Mulligan, supporting Fassbender as Brandon's capricious sister Sissy, is also deserving high praise. Her chemistry with Fassbender is electric, bringing a volatile and deep relationship to the screen with the two sharing both tender moments and some of the most uneasily tense scenes in the entire film. Her haunting yet beautiful take on a well-known film theme is also guaranteed to stay with you just as long as some of Shame's most hard-hitting sexual images.

Shame is a modern masterpiece: a piece of art where everything is perfectly crafted and exudes excellence. Steve McQueen is a director of substantial talent who will undoubtedly prove to be a name in cinema worth watching very closely in the years to come. But it is the awe-inspiring performance from Michael Fassbender that will imprint itself upon your mind long after the film's conclusion, and rightfully so. It's the most brilliant performance I've seen yet from one of the finest acting talents of the 21st Century. Shame is regularly not an easy watch, but it's a film that without question deserves to be seen.

10/10