HUNGER directed by Steve McQueen (2008)

I’ve been reading a lot about Steve McQueen’s new movie Shame which is released this week.  Pieces about the British born director usually include praise for his debut full length movie, Hunger, released in 2008 which also stars Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender .  While waiting for Fassbender the sex addict, I thought I’d watch him as the IRA hunger striker, Bobby Sands.

And what a remarkable performance it is. There can’t be many actors prepared to starve themselves almost to death to play a role but this is what he does in order to act out Sands’ final 66 days on earth. He embarked on a 10 week crash diet in LA which, by the end, had him surviving on just 600 calories a day. He ended up weighing  59 kg which was almost the same weight as that of Sands when he died and perilously close to the point of no return when your vital organs start giving up.

When you see shots of him with visible bones, the first thought is that this is a clever piece of Photoshop style trickery, but, when you realise he really looked like this, it is doubly shocking. Apparently, many people thought Fassbender was suffering from cancer and it’s amazing that he had sufficient energy to play the final scenes. To embark on such a no holds barred degree of commitment shows the level of belief must have had in McQueen’s movie. You wouldn’t  go through this self-torture for a second-rate production. Continue reading →