The Wave (Germany, 2008) and Hunger (UK/Ireland, 2008): Fascism & Faeces (3/3) By Philip Wincolmlee Barnes

(1/3), (2/3), (2/3).

It doesn't work. Acting upon their degraded position, the incarcerated men use what little they have - namely, their own bodies - to show their contempt for their situation. Their hair becomes long and tangled and, refusing to bathe, they come to resemble feral creatures. Then comes what is arguably the next logical step: the Dirty Protests, during which the inmates, already filthy from not washing, daub their cramped cells with excrement and flood corridors with bowls of fetid urine (thankfully the film is not available in Smell-O-Vision...). In retaliation the wardens (whose own lives are, in many respects, as equally as bleak and limited) carry out vicious cleaning up campaigns: on a regular basis prisoners are dragged kicking and screaming from their confinement and have their heads roughly scalped and are, quite literally, beaten into bathtubs.

During visiting hours - which are not, understandably, the most buoyant of occasions - the accused IRA men have tiny packages smuggled in by their spouses (rolled up newspaper cuttings, small transmitters, etc) in a bid to keep abreast of wider political feeling about their plight in the outside world. As with the forced grooming exercises, guards routinely try to retrieve these snippets of reality from their charges (aggressive anal cavity search, anyone? No? I thought not...).

It is during the inmates strained and mumbling encounters on visiting day that the sheer awfulness of the situation is writ large - not just for the detained men and their (sometimes reluctantly) bullying wardens, but also for their families, the broader shattered communities, and the largely ineffectual attempts at reconciliation and reparation by local politicians and members of the clergy. There is not a single positive scene in Hunger - probably quite rightly so, given the circumstances portrayed within it. Even the warden, with whom the film begins, has a thoroughly wretched life; when he is seen returning home it is to his petrified wife, and there is an equally strained encounter between himself and his aging mother (now so ill that she no longer registers him at all - which is, perhaps, for the best, as a gunman blows his brains onto her lap whilst he is at her retirement home.)

The relentless regime of squalor and antagonism is superseded, about halfway through the film, by a long scene in which Bobby Sands - an influential inmate amongst his peers - discusses his plans for a hunger strike with a clergyman. This is a long and sustained conversation - more a monologue - in a feature generally bereft of any form of reasoned communication.

Sands approaches his decision - to starve himself to death 'for the Republican cause' - with an almost Zen-like calm and deliberation; weeks of wallowing in his own shit has clearly led him to conclude that an even more extreme act of self-indignation is necessary to shock the powers that be, and that other men are willing to follow his lead. He does go through with it in a relatively short space of (film) time - sixty six excruciatingly painful days in reality. We witness Sands' complete physical (and arguably mental) collapse as he refuses all offers of nourishment (incredibly weak towards the end, there is no indication that he was ever force-fed by the prison hospital staff). Every inch of his body becomes a sunken, sagged, jaundiced yellow; his mouth, a dry crack through which he wheezes wordlessly; his back becomes ravaged by bloody scabs and pockmarks; he vomits black bile and blood; he cannot bathe unassisted, and he becomes entirely bedridden. Despite various ploys by the authorities (such as bringing family and friends to his bedside, to dissuade him from this slow suicide) his vacant, rheumy eyes clearly indicate that Sands is at a point of no return. He is resigned to his ideal of political martyrdom. In McQueen's film the starvation process is depicted methodically and without sentiment - probably appropriately so, considering a life associated with incredible violence that led him to such a dark place. Hunger is an unflinching portrayal of a clandestine and subhuman world. There is no attempt by the director to shoehorn in any redemptive sentiment. In a sense, as with The Wave, there are no new insights in a broader sense: it is obvious to assume that those involved in violent activity, for whatever motivation, tend to attract punishment, or at least abhorrence and disdain. Throughout, however, there is an impassive, non-partisan approach to this troubling subject matter.

What was fascinating in McQueen's film in particular - and a subtlety lacking in Gansel's The Wave (also based on true events) - was the attention to detail, and to the significance of small, private gestures; the sickly pale prison lighting, mirroring the nausea - both inwardly and outwardly - of both the inmates and their keepers. The awkward silences during visiting times.

Using pages from the Bible in shit-stained cells to roll cigarettes with. A prisoner befriends an insect that crawls through a broken window protected by a jagged wire mesh. And a barrage of close-up shots of rotting food, bloodied knuckles, and soiled bandages and sheets. I was not previously familiar with McQueen's work, either as a Turner Prize winning artist or here, as a filmmaker, but his technique towards an admittedly challenging subject has a relentless durability about it. One is curious as to why he chose the story of Bobby Sands in the first place - one hopes not for the tabloid-grabbing motivations so often apparent in the Brit Art (and post-Brit Art) jet set. Nonetheless, it is an intense study of (some would say self-imposed) martyrdom and, from the various camps of the politics at stake, of fanaticism. Never being one for the trite happy endings of Hollywood 'schlock-busters' it would, however, be intriguing to see in due course McQueen tackle a different kind of subject - one no less 'real' - but, perhaps, one that dares, in these jaded and fraught times, to posit a more hopeful prospect for our all too brief encounter with mortality. Or, as I tritely commented to the lady sat next to me in the cinema: 'They won't be turning this into a musical...'

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