The film Hunger was by far the most mind-disturbing movie I think that I have possibly ever seen. It is an Irish/ United Kingdom film directed by performance video artist/ director Steven McQueen in 2008. While the plot, alone, of Hunger was disturbing enough to affect probably any type of person that would ever see it, there are several other aspects of the film that enhanced its effects and made the film more drastic. The film was created in with a tripartite structure, meaning that it is divided into three parts. Speaking for myself, the dramatic themes and elements of each of these parts are what made the movie the so disturbing as I watched.
The first part of the film, which was approximately forty minutes, definitely set the serious, and perhaps even unsettling, tone of the film. The beginning scene was loud bangs, which was one of the only sounds heard throughout the entire part of the film. Once the loud banging ended and the first few minutes of the movie were underway, the silence was evident; there is a powerful lack of dialogue within the first forty minutes, which more than anything aurally assaults the viewers’ senses. Sound is literally only heard a few times in this part of Hunger, which I find mesmerizing that Steven McQueen was able to so successfully pull this off with only telling the story with only great imagery. However, I believe it is the substantial silence that mainly aids to the intensity of the story coming through along with the powerful images in this part of the film.
Roughly the next twenty-eight or so minutes make up the next part of the tripartite structure of Hunger, and about the first twenty of those minutes were once scene, with only two characters. I found this part of the film to be the most difficult to follow, I feel mainly because it was such a strong opposite of what we are used to seeing in typical Hollywood films, where the scenes of the movies are comprised of takes lasting sometimes only a few seconds. Aside from this part of the film being a single scene, it was also a little difficult to become adjusted to following the Irish dialect of Bobby and the priest as they are talking to, and even challenging, one another.
The final part of the movie was the most visually and possibly overall disturbing. This is when Bobby’s hunger strike was displayed. The visually assaulting imagery came into play once he had gone so long without food that his ribs and other protrusions out of his body became visible, including his eyeballs at times. He also eventually began to suffer from hallucinations, mostly of himself has a younger boy around the age of twelve running through the woods. I feel the imagery became the most important in this part of the film, because without being able to see the effects of the hunger strike on Bobby’s body, it would not have produced the same effect for the viewers.
The tripartite structure of Hunger is what I feel was the success of the effectiveness of the film. I think since each of the factors of each part were focused on individually, they were more dramatic for the viewers of the films, and ultimately brought through the horror of the reality of the time period and the hunger strikes that were taking place.
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