The Human Bodyas Political Weapon:An Interview with Steve McQueenby Gary Crowdus

efore receiving critical acclaim and festival awards last year forhis debut feature film, Hunger-scheduled for a March 2009theatrical release in the U.S.-British filnmmaker Steve McQueen

was best known for his museum and art-gallery installations and exhi-bitions of short films and videos. Many of thre earlier films-Bear(1993), Just Above My Head (1996), and Catch (1997)-are experi-mental in nature, minimalist in style, often silent, and characterized byunusual camera angles and points of view. The later works, more semni-documentary in format, explore historical and contemporary socialissues, but in a resolutely nondidactic, nonexplanatory; abstract stylethat aims instead at conveying a participatory, sensory experience oftheir subjects, such as Caribs' Leap (2002), on a seventeenth-centuryhistorical event in Grenada, Western Deep (2002), on South Africangold miners, or Gravesend (2007), on coltan miners in the Congo.

Hunger, winner of the International Film Critics (FIPRESCI)Award and the Canira d'Or Award for Best First Feature Film at the2008 Cannes Film Festival, impressively conflates those earlier fihns'interests in innovativeesthetics and social themesin an evocative re-creation Telling the Bobby Satof the 1981 Hunger Strike on the raw physical e)by Irish Republican Armyprisoners at the British the hunger strike, witprison ofLongKesh, known replaced by a more tas the H-Blocks, outsideBelfast in Northern Ire-land. This campaign, led by twenty-seven-year-old Bobby Sands, wasthe focus of worldwide media coverage, and, as McQueen explains inthe following interview, made an indelible impression on him, as anreleven-year-old growing up in a West London neighborhood who wastrying to understand the seemingly bizarre events.

After March 1976, when the British Government's Northern IrelandOffice instituted a new policy of "criminalization" during the ongoingconflict known as the "Troubles," the struggle of IRA prisonersforpolit-ical status, to be recognized as prisoners of war and not as comnnmoncriminals, intensified within the walls of Long Kesh. Their campaignbegan with the "blanket protest," since they refitsed to wear a prisonuniform and demanded the right to wear their own clothes. This esca-lated into the "no wash" and "dirty" protests, the latter of whichinvolved the smearing of their excrement on the walls of their cells. Theprisoners' determined efforts to thwart prison discipline were met inturn by increasing harassment and physical attacks by the guards. As defacto political prisoners, the IRA inmates, who were generally despisedby their captors as violent terrorists and murderers (although many ofthem, like Sands, had never killed anyone and had received unusuallyharsh sentences for relatively minor offenses) were routinely brutalized,almost as a means of retribution.

For viewers expecting a more conventional, expository narrativeapproach (such as Terry George's Some Mother's Son or Les Blair'sH3), Hunger will be disappointing. Apart from a few basic facts aboutthe "Troubles" and the struggle between IRA prisoners and the BritishGovernment over political status, which are conveyed in some pre-titletexts and a few overheard excerpts from radio newscasts and politicalspeeches by Margaret Thatcher, the filhnmakers are unconcerned about

providing any detailed historical or political contextfor the events portrayed.MecQueen even refuses to describe Hunger as a '"political"film, pre-

ferring instead to characterize his approach as "humanist." Hunger is adecidedly nonpartisan work, not interested in scoring political points(unlike, for example, the tendentious approach of fellow British film-maker Ken Loach's 2006 historical treatise on the Anglo-Irish conflict,The Wind That Shakes the Barley), consciously attempting to avoidany "simplistic notion of 'hero, or 'martyr' or 'victim. "' McQueen hasexplained that his political ahn with Hunger is "to provoke debate inthe audience, to challenge our own morality." This the film decidedlydoes, whether it's to question the morality of a prison officer who rou-tinely batters IRA inmates with his fists while they are restrained byguards, the morality of an IRA gunman who later assassinates thatsame prison officer with a bullet to the head, the morality of a riot-squad policeman who savagely beats defenseless prisoners with a wood-en truncheon, or even the morality of starving oneself to death as apolitical tactic.

ids story, with a focuscperience of prison andth the partisan politicstumanist perspective.

While Hunger will beattacked by some forromanticizing Sands as thefiln's "hero," any dispas-sionate viewer will notethat the film is eminentlybalanced in showing empa-

"- "thy for both prisoners andwarders. While it never

excuses or rationalizes the prison guards' inhumanity, it does imagina-tively reveal the corrosive effects-physically, emotionally, and moral-ly-of their behavior on themselves.

W1hile many of the fihn's historical references (e.g., the British Gov-ernment's duplicitous negotiations to end an earlier hunger strike, anongoing IRA campaign outside tire prison of assassinations of prisonguards, etc.) and visual details (e.g., the close-up of the "UDA," forUlster Defence Association, tattooed on a guard's knuckles) will res-onate meaningJidly for British and Irish viewers, they will mystify theaverage, uninformed nzoviegoer. The deliberate choice by McQueenand coscreenwriter Enda Walsh to forego more specific social and his-torical contextualization could nevertheless be seen as enabling moreuniversal implications for a wider audience. Many viewers, even inGreat Britain and Ireland, for example, will readily relate the atrocitiesih Hunger to more contemporary prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib andGuantdnamo Bay. As screenwriter Jorge Semprun once explained hisand director Costa Gavras's decision to not specify the Greek context oftile political assassination dramatized in Z, "Let us not try to reassureourselves, this type of thing doesn't only happen elsewhere, it happenseverywhere." Or, as .&cQueen himself noted in a recent interview inCahiers du cin6ma about the power of cinema to provoke broaderdebateý "A film can perhaps be the point of departure for somethingmuch bigger."

Ironically, for a film which othenvise utilizes dialog very sparely, atthe center of tile neatly delineated tripartite structure of Hunger is anextended scene featuring an absolute torrent of words, an encounterbetween Hunger Strike leader Bobby Sands and a Catholic Priest,Father Dominic Moran, which provocatively broaches many of the key

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/ /- '-IRA prisoner Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham) engage in an intensedebate over the politics and morality of the hunger strike in this scene from Steve McQueen's debut feature, Hunger.

religious, historical, and political issues involved in the Hunger Strike.This remarkable, twenty-two minute scene, most of which consists ofone uninterrupted take, is powered by the performances of MichaelFassbender as Sands and veteran Irish actor Liam Cunningham asFather Moran (a fictional amalgamation of several real-life priests,including Father Denis Faul, a prison reform advocate and frequentvisitor to Long Kesh, and Sands's neighborhood curate, Father SeanRogan). Their conversation, which progresses from awkward small talk,to playful banter, to ideological challenge and counterchallenge, and,finally, to lacerating criticisms, is clearly the work of McQueen'scoscreenwriter, the Irish playwright Enda Walsh.

This thought-provoking exchange goes a long way, in fact, to coin-pensate for the sketchiness of these issues elsewhere in the film. In theirfierce battle of wills, we can appreciate the decision of Sands-who feltpersonally responsible for the failure of an earlier hunger strike-to usehis body, as the only weapon he has left, as a means of political protestagainst an intransigent British Government led by the "Iron Lady," therecently elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. We can simultane-ously discern the validity of the arguments of the priest who, althoughhe too supports the nationalist cause, sees the absence of any strategicpolitical thinking in Sand's stubborn, self-indulgent decision essentiallyto commit suicide.

Although, politically speaking, the film focuses on "the body as siteof political warfare," as McQueen has commented, it's also clear thathis primary esthetic interest is "to show what it was like to see, hear,smell and touch in the H-block." Hunger is indeed most remarkable, inpurely cinematic terms-especially through the all-encompassing visualperspective of its 2.35:1 wide-screen compositions and creative use ofsound effects, ambient noise, and a minimalist musical score-for con-

veying a visceral sense of what it must have been like, for both prisonersand warders, to live or work in the politically charged, savagely violentenvironment of Northern Ireland's most notorious prison complex.While Hunger doesn't stint in its frank portrayal of the barbaricatmosphere within the H-Block-including periodic beatings by theguards, the gruesome body cavity searches for contraband, and thevicious clubbings administered by a squad of riot police after a prisonerrebellion. The film is equally notable for its impressionistic details-thelong stretches of boredom, maggot-infested cells, a furtive nighttimeattempt to masturbate without awakening one's ceUlmate, the ingenioussmuggling of messages and other items during prisoners' monitoredmeetings with wives, girlfriends or relatives, hallways awash in urineand cell walls covered in excrement that must be cleaned up by hazmat-suited prison workers, and the gentle medical ministrations of a hospi-tal attendant during Sands's prolonged death watch.

In the last third of the film-which portrays Sands's hunger strike,his gradual wasting away, as his body consumes itself, and the agoniz-ing death throes of his final days-Hunger strives for a visual poetry ofsorts in its cinematic rendering of his failing eyesight and hearing anddelirious episodes in which he hallucinates images of himself as atwelve-year-old boy (a poignant visual echo of a childhood reminiscencerelated earlier in his conversation with the priest). It's in moments likethese that the humanist vision of Hunger truly comes to the fore, mak-ing a more universal statement about the human tragedy so often creat-ed out of these bitter, bloody, and intransigent political conflicts.

We spoke with McQueen about Hunger, focusing on its unusualnarrative approach and its striking cinematic qualities, in September2008, when the filmmaker was in town for screenings of his film at theNew York Film Festival.--Gary Crowdus

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Cineaste: In preparing your screenplay, which deals with an incrediblycomplex series of historical events, you've explained that since you andyour coscreenwriter, Enda Walsh, could not "tell everything," you needonly "tell enough." A British or an Irish audience will be very familiarwith these events, and will pick up on all the details and nuances, butwere you concerned that a broader international audience might besomewhat clueless?Steve McQueen: No, because as far as I was concerned it was aboutthe essence, the essentials, and not to sort of tick off every box. Onehas to f6cus and narrow it down to get to the essence of it, and that's what Iwanted to achieve. I think that by doing that more people can relateto it than by trying to convey the entire history of these past events.Cineaste: What sort of research did you do for the filn?McQueen: I went to Northern Ireland two years before I met Enda,and did some research there. Later, when Enda came on board, wewent back and did a week of intense interviews with hunger strikersand prison officers. You can't get that kind of information from anyother source. I was interested in the information between the words.It was all about the details, such as guys waking up with maggotscrawling on the floor underneath them, of how during the summerthere were these horrible bluebottle flies all over the place, how itwas freezing cold in the winter, or the details of living for four and ahalf years in a cell covered with excrement and awash with urine,and all the time surrounded by violence. You can't get that kind ofinformation through books and I needed it and wanted it.Cineaste: How did you conceive of the narrative structure?McQueen: It's really a three-act structure. The only way I candescribe it is that it's almost like floating down a river on your back.Basically you're initially taking in and familiarizing yourself withyour surroundings. At acertain point it becomes a "Politicians makerapid, and your surround-ings become fractured, the interested in howimages become distorted, their situations. 1After that it becomes awaterfall, with a loss of about really. I dorgravity, through the slow a political film, itdeath of Bobby Sands.That's the way I wanted tostructure it. It's a situation where one has to be led in by a prisonguard and then led out by Bobby.

While we were researching the film, we came across this com-ment by Godard that the only way one could film the Holocaust wasthrough the eyes of a guard. Likewise, we wanted to find multipleviewpoints for our story in order to arrive at a better understandingof the situation, and not merely a stereotypical understanding.Cineaste: One of the things that most impressed me about the filn wasthe very spare use of dialog, and in particular the avoidance of usingdialog for very obvious and clumsy plot exposition.McQueen: I think viewers are much more intelligent than manyscreenwriters think. That's why, when I decided I wanted to workwith somebody, I didn't want to work with a screenwriter but with atheater writer. After many interviews, Enda Walsh was the one whocame through because, for me at least, it's less about the narrativethan it is about the abstract, which would have contained some kindof, for lack of a better word, truth.

In most movies, as soon as things start, dialog emerges, and Iwanted to have a movie where more or less the first forty minutes isin silence, so the viewers' other senses would come to the fore. Inthat kind of optimum situation, the brain isn't overloaded or over-worked, so when dialog does happen at a certain point, the viewercan focus on the dialog in a very sensual and focused way.Cineaste: In this regard, one of the fihn's standout sequences is thelong, single-take dialog scene between Bobby Sands and the Catholicpriest, Father Dominic Moran. How long does that scene actually run?McQueen: It's one seventeen-and-a-half minute take of Bobby andthe priest before we cut to a close-up of Bobby. We shot the sceneon an Arriflex camera modified for two-perf film-you know, likeSergio Leone used for his Spaghetti Westerns. Usually 35mm film is

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four perforations per frame, but Arri-because more people areshooting on hi-def video and they want to encourage more people toshoot on film-modified this camera for us. It doubles the amountof footage on a roll, twenty minutes instead of the usual ten minutes,so we were able to film the dialog scene in one continuous take.Cineaste: How did you arrive at that esthetic choice?McQueen: Well, if we filmed this conversation we're having now,the camera would be shooting over your shoulder on me, followedby a reverse shot over my shoulder on you. In that case, youwouldn't appear to be talking to me but to the audience, and viceversa. What I wanted was a scene with two people who were havingan intimate conversation with each other, where they were gettingthe action and reaction from each other. At the same time, webacklit them so their faces are virtually in shadow, so what happensis that the audience's ears become much more attuned, their eyesbecome much sharper, they lean in more because esthetically we'repushing them away from a conversation about the reasons forchoosing to die. When I first had the idea' for the scene, I thought ofit as like a Connors and McEnroe Wimbledon finals match, whereboth guys want the same thing but they play differently-one is aserve and volleyer and the other is a baseliner, so each has a way ofhow they want to win this.Cineaste: How many takes did you do of the scene?McQueen: We did four. It was amazing what happened in thatroom. Of course, the conversation itself was critical and essential tothe story and the actors had rehearsed and rehearsed before that, butwhen the time finally came that they had to do it, the tension in theroom really ratcheted up a couple of notches. The focus was intense,it was almost like a tightrope walker's situation, there was that

amount of stress. But all that

situations but I'm added to the performancesin some way.

people respond to Cineaste: Was the character

hat's what it's all of the fictional priest based onFather Denis Faul, the

't think Hunger is Catholic priest at the H-s a human film." Blocks during the hunger

strikes?McQueen: Well, we met

Faul before he died, but we also talked to several other priests, so thecharacter was actually an amalgamation of a number of priestsinvolved in the events.Cineaste: He really makes a variety of very strong arguments againstSands's decision to go oni a hunger strike to death.McQueen: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we had to go all the way. Both ofthem are nationalists but one wants the people for the church andthe other wants the people for a kind of socialism.Cineaste: Although the filn is likely to be attacked by the Tory press inthe U.K. as a glorification of IRA terrorists and hunger strikers, anydispassionate viewer will see that the fihn has as much empathy for thephysical and emotional traunma that the guards, as well as the inmates,are undergoing.McQueen: Absolutely.Cineaste: I was particularly impressed, in this regard, with the scenewhere you focus on a young, obviously nervous and presumably moreinexperienced member of the riot squad sent in to the H-Blocks. Afterjoining in the brutalization of the inmates, including a particularlyvicious beating and kicking, this young policeman is last seen, shakingand in tears, hiding in a corner away from the continuing violence.How important was that scene foryou and why?McQueen: It was very important for me because it showed the basichumanity of the situation. It's vitally important that we can revealourselves not just as brutes but as human beings in reaction to whatwe've done. Once you do something like that, it's not like you canjust sort of walk away and forget about it. It resonates. It's almostlike the frustration of it all-he has to get involved himself, he has tobe one of the guys...Cineaste: He plays the role but then he's repulsed by his actions...McQueen: And by himself. So I felt that we needed to have this

9A rINMPARTP .nnr;nA- 9nnn

scene of him crying, after having kicked and beaten another person,in order to show these people as human beings, not as freaks.Cineaste: Why did you decide to use the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, a wide-screen format?McQueen: It was Monet's water lilies. I was in Japan and I saw hispaintings, and I rang my cinematographer and said, "It has to be thiskind of frame, I see it now." What happens in that wide-screenframe is narrative. What I mean by that is that it's so wide that whenyou put one thing in the frame, you've always got to put anotherthing in, and soon two and two becomes four. You always have to

sort of put one thing in the frame with something else, so there'salways this narrative going on within this full frame. There is alsothis linear situation, with thefilm going on at twenty-fourframes per second and telling Fi -y"N'a story. But at the same timeyou can tell another nar-rative within frames, becausethe screen format is so widethat you've always got two orthree things within theframe, which is just beau-tiful.Cineaste: The soundtrack ofthe film is quite unusual inthat it doesn't use a tra-ditional melodic underscorebut instead either ambientnoise or a sort of astringentminimalism, which, especiallytoward the end of the film,tends to undercut any easy ormanipulative sentiment.McQueen: Well, that's mykind of thing. I want people

to make up their own minds.

I don't like music that makesthe viewer say, "Oh, I shouldfeel this now." It's not mycup of tea. Besides, the filmis very lean. I don't want it toseem decorative or some-thing that needs to be filled.

Sound in itself is music,and is enough to actuallydrive the film forward. Iwant people to become moreaware of themselves whilethey're watching the film,and therefore the soundbecomes a necessity. Thesound of the police trun- Top: H-Block cellmates Davey Gillen (B

Campbell (Liam McMahon). Bottom: Mcheons hitting the shields, smokes "cigarettes" rolled from pages cfor example, is based on adrumbeat. It's a violent,aggressive situation, and that sound raises your heartbeat, and itbecomes this forward narrative drive-boom, boom, boom!-and itputs you on edge. So it's a question of how you play up the sound.Music sometimes can block a lot of things. -Using sound can makepeople sensitive to themselves while they're watching the film, so itbecomes a ffuller experience, and more of a cinematic than a theatri-cal experience.Cineaste: Films dealing with the IRA, such as Terry George's SomeMother's Son or, more recently, Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakesthe Barley, tend to be attacked, especially by right-wing elements of theU.K. press, as "pro-IRA" movies. Do you expect, as a British

filmmaker, to be criticized for glorifying the hunger strikers?McQueen: I don't know if they will attack the filn. I hope they willsee the humanity of the situation. For me it's not about the politics.

Ir

What's interesting for me about this film is not just about whathappened twenty-seven years ago, it's also about what's happeningnow, to a certain extent, with Guantdnamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Forme that's the main accomplishment. I think people, even those onthe right, understand and realize that what happened in the H-Blocks was particularly shameful. I also think that if they see that thepeople who are looking after or guarding the hunger strikers areportrayed in a right and proper manner, then they'll understand thesituation a little bit better.Cineaste: One might say that the film's principal protagonists areBobby Sands, as the leader of the IRA hunger strikers, and MargaretThatcher, the "Iron Lady," as the leader of the British Government. It

could be said that Hungerdramatizes the unstoppableforce meeting the immoveableobject.McQueen: Yes, it's two

gig extremes.Cineaste: Sands's position isconveyed primarily in the longdialog scene with the priest,whereas Thatcher's position isconveyed in a few brief ex-cerpts from radio broadcasts,including two of her speeches.

. Did you consider includingsome of her other more out-rageous statements to heightenthis conflict even more?McQueen: No, I didn't thinkit was necessary. The twostatements we use-aboutthe denial of political status

for the prisoners and how thehunger strike was an appealto pity-were enough. I alsoliked how her voice almostcame in like a vapor. And hervoice, even without herimage, is so strong, that it'senough. The fact that she'sheard in the movie onlytwice, and we're having thisconversation about it now,shows how strong andforceful and iconic that voicewas.Cineaste: There seems to be avery strong political com-ponent in much of your work,

Sin whatever medium. Whererian Milligan, foreground) and Gerry does that come from?ichael Fassbender as Bobby Sandsfthe Bible in Steve McQueen's Hunger. McQueen: I suppose it's

corny to say, but if caringabout people is political, then

I'm political. I am not interested in politics per se, I'm interested inpeople. Politicians make situations but I'm interested in how peoplerespond to their situations. That's what it's all about really. I don'tthink Hunger is a political film, it's a human film.Cineaste: Well, it's a political subject but you don't bring a partisanpolitical position to it.McQueen: One could say that Shakespeare is political, andabsolutely he is. One could say that Van Gogh is political, andabsolutely he is. As an artist it's all about looking around you, atwhat's going on around you, trying to make some sense of it, andputting it in one or another shape or form. E

Hunger is distributed bylIFC Films, I I Penn Plaza, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001,phone (212) 324-8500.

CINEASTE, Spring 2009 25

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TITLE: The Human Body as Political Weapon: An Interviewwith Steve McQueen

SOURCE: Cineaste 34 no2 Spr 2009

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