Definitely. I’ve seen nothing but praise for this film and I’m really excited to finally see it.
This should be freaking awesome. And, for some reason, I didn’t know it was Michael Fassbender. That guy’s awesome.
Savvy
I am going to shit myself when this comes out in February. Then I’m going to smear the shit all over my bedroom walls in honor of this powerful film.
There is a God!
Wow, 6000, have fun with that… At least you’re not going all Salo on us…
Savvy
For a split second I thought you were talking about the magnificent 1966 film version of the Knut Hamsen novel “Hunger” with the great performance by Per Oscarsson, a criminally neglected film.
Steve McQueen was great in The Blob.
I don’t think this is “McQueen” McQueen.
They are jk.
if anyone has cox cable you can watch it for free on sundance on demand.
Yeah – or oddly you can pick this up and Gomorrah and A Christmas Tale at Blockbuster as Blockbuster Exclusive releases!
Regardless – the Cover art on Hunger is absolutely beautiful and startling powerful! I personally like the cover art more than I liked the film itself!
@ Howard Fritzson
Me too. Great film (and novel).
Woooo!!! Gorgeous cover guys!
it was mentioned this film is on demand for cox cable, i would also like to mention it is available for Comcast cable customers (and its FREE!) until december 6th.
watched this film today and i have to say i loved it. can not wait for the criterion disc to reach my hands!
Am I psyched? Fuck no.
I won’t support any film that glorifies killers and terrorists.
Definitely looking forward to the Criterion release. :]
Moderated
I second GTW’s sentiments.
Moderated
I agree with GTW and Rumplesink. And since when is stating your opinions about a film ‘inappropriate’?
Just saw Hunger last weekend. It was amazing. I plan to buy a Blu-Ray player soon and I will get this one on Blu-Ray. The extras are great as well.
Good question, Jon. I know a little about the subject matter personally and I find it repulsive to say the least.
That doesn’t mean I believe in censorship, though. Unlike some other people…
I’ve nothing against killers in movies at all. I’ve certainly nothing against Irish people, but what irks me is whenever the Irish in particular are killing and torturing people it’s okay because it’s for a cause. Every film I’ve seen featuring Irish terrorists glosses over or overly justifies the terrible things these ‘freedom-fighters’ do. Hunger focusses almost exclusively on how bad these people are treated by their captors, and the depths to which they have to sink in order to survive, or make their point. It’s very easy to sympathise with inmates who’re being mistreated by prison officers when 99% of the film is devoted to showing the suffering of the inmates at the hands of the officers and 1% to showing what these inmates did to be there.
This may seem overly simplistic and frankly it is, but it’s a far more complicated issue than most people realise, and I’d have much more respect for these filmmakers if they made a film that showed both sides of the story where the IRA are concerned, instead of always taking the side of the Irish terrorists.
I’m assuming there are films out there who present a more balanced view of the issues, but I’ve not come across them. I’d be interested to see them if anyone knows of any.
IMHO, Hunger doesn’t adress the issues of what the IRA members did to deserve being imprisoned because that’s not its focus; it’s about how they were treated as inmates (like animals) and how one person’s total belief in his being right led him to affect the culture in which he lived.
If anyone wants to address the brutality of the IRA, well, that’s another movie to be made.
In other words, a one-sided white wash…
I watched this yesterday and I thought it was amazing. I would agree it does not really depict the reason the IRA members were imprisoned and being an ignorant American this is the first I have heard of any of this. Though the supplemental features talked about how the prison guard was looking for bombs under his car in the beginning and the 80s news broadcast showed a bit of the violence the IRA was involved in, I think Steve Mcqueen really was just trying to depict what happened within the prison during the hunger strike and avoid political issues, though with the whole 15 minute priest discussion, which was really the only explanation for his hunger strike it only really showed his side of the story…..I saw him as a fanatic doing all this just over the principle of wearing his own clothes and being treated as a prisoner of war in jail.
I think this movie mostly just showed a person suffering for something he believed in, and I don’t think that necessarily makes that person a hero.
I’m not into bullshit moral relativism, which is what I’m reading here.
There’s a right and there’s a wrong and any film that glorifies terrorists like Bobby Sands deserves to be denounced. Just as what the British themselves did on Bloody Sunday in 1971 deserves to be denounced. You cannot differentiate the hunger strike with it’s background and why it took place. That’s like differentiating between the sky and the oxygen that it contains. That’s just utter nonsense.
Nobody forced Bobby Sands to walk around naked, smearing his excrement all over the walls and starving himself to death. He made a conscious choice to put himself in that position and do what he did.
Two wrongs NEVER make a right…
I felt this was one of the most accomplished pieces of cinema of recent years – and the flat out best that I’ve seen from the UK lately.
It seems that those who are against Hunger believe that it in some way endangers society by advocating violence. But in my opinion the film doesn’t do that at all. You should remember that there is not a single scene (a little spoiler coming in telling what there is ‘not’ in the film) … not a single scene where the IRA commit violence to others – or even, if I remember, ever really talk about or try to justify doing so. This film focuses purely on both the violence these prisoners suffer at the hands of others, and at the hands of themselves – this is about sacrifice, and morally is on a completely different ground. As I see it, their acts of sacrifice, as led by Sands, were their only pure act of moral defiance – before that they dirtied their hands with murder, if we choose to remind ourselves of the fact, but this last act was one of self-abandoning for a high moral cause – and a cause that was NOT political. The film takes great pains to show this, if you consider the final shots before the credits.
In a world suffering much more from apathy than from misguided action, such stories should be extremely welcome, rather than shouted down.
Well Morris, if what you say is true, then the filmmakers could have created a fictionally-named character under a fictionally-named conflict against a fictionally-named adversary . Only then could I lend any credence to what you say.
But that’s not the case here. McQueen wanted to make a pro-IRA statement and give an artful embellishment to it. And he’s certainly entitled to do that. And I’m certainly entitled to object.
And no, I don’t think people are going to go around and start blowing up bombs, and getting themselves locked up over it and then smearing their own excrement all over the walls just by watching this film. That kind of logic is utter nonsense.
So let’s cut the hero-worshiping Che Guevara-like crap. Sands wasn’t locked up because he was the next Gerry Conlon. We’re not talking about an injustice here. This is nothing more than ‘revolutionary chic’ disguised as an injustice.
not a single scene where the IRA commit violence to others
16 guards were killed during the protest. One guard in the film had his brains shot into his mother’s lap.
Scout
If Criterion were going to pick any film from the last year and release it….well, this is it, really. Anyone else fucking psyched for this to be released?