Remarkably, this weekend brings the release of two smart, well-acted dramas that look long and hard at a subject much ignored: how prison can become a tool of government policy. Steve McQueen’s Hunger, which won the Golden Camera (for best first feature) at Cannes and the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, chronicles the last six weeks of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who starved himself to death in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison in 1981 to protest his lack of status as a political prisoner. Closer to home, Tim Disney’s American Violet dramatizes the true story of Regina Kelly, a poor mother of four who dared to sue the district attorney of Robertson County, Texas, for civil rights violations after he locked her up in November 2000. The movies don’t share much in common stylistically—Hunger is largely a visual experience, American Violet a verbal one—but both draw power from their heroes, who assert their personhood against a system designed to crush it.
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Sands hoped to martyr himself for the cause of a united Irish republic, and he succeeded in that, his death inspiring a fresh wave of defiance against the English. Hunger opens with the struggle between guards and imprisoned republicans already in progress: as part of the “blanket protest,” prisoners refuse to wear uniforms and instead wrap themselves in their bedding; as part of the “no-wash protest,” they piss through the doors of their cells and smear their own shit on the walls. A previous hunger strike has already failed, but this time Sands plans to stagger the strike, another loyalist following after him every two weeks so their serial deaths will sustain the public uproar. Midway through the movie there’s an epic 24-minute scene in which Sands (Michael Fassbender) defends his decision to a tough-minded priest (Liam Cunningham), but in the claustrophobic cell block the protesters have already internalized their cause so deeply that the world of words seems distant and inconsequential. In fact, Hunger often recalls Robert Bresson’s metaphysical prison drama A Man Escaped (1956) in its asceticism, dwelling on Sands’s incredible self-denial as he slowly wastes away.
Regina Kelly may not have been willing to martyr herself, but her defiance is still impressive. Taking audience questions about American Violet at the Telluride film festival, she alleged that even after district attorney John Paschall settled out of court with her and the other plaintiffs in an ACLU suit, he enforced an informal employment blacklist against her in her hometown of Hearne, Texas. She said she refused to be driven out of town.
Care to comment? Find this review at chicagoreader.com. And for more on movies, see our blog On Film.
Written by Steve McQueen and Enda Walsh Directed by McQueen
American Violet ★★★
Written by Bill Haney
Directed by Tim Disney
