Why I didn’t review HUNGER
“What you put in your head is there forever,” says one of the two main characters in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. They are, as I don’t need to tell you if you are one of the many who have read this Pulitzer Prize-winning best seller, a father and his young son struggling to stay alive while crossing a post-Apocalyptic America.
It’s a line that comes up when the father is trying to prevent the boy from seeing a particularly gruesome sight, one of many in the book (and, as horrible as it is, not nearly so horrible as one that occurs a few pages later).
I picked up the book while waiting for a delayed flight a few months ago, read about half of it in the airport, and wasn’t able to get back to it until a few days ago when I needed something to read while waiting for Terminator Salvation to begin. It seemed appropriate (though it also robbed that mindless movie of whatever dystopian impact it might have had).
I’m now about 75% of the way through it, and that may be as far as I get. Its literary merit is undeniable, but it is so awfully, unrelievedly grim that I’m afraid of it. The story can only get worse, and as I generally only have time to read before going to sleep at night, I hate to let it get into my dreams.
This is why I just never got around to reviewing the film Hunger, which concludes a week’s run at the Eastern Hills Mall Cinema today. I meant to: I have a screening DVD that has been sitting on my desk since before it opened. This acclaimed British/Irish co-production, winner of numerous film festival awards, charts in what I understand to be great detail the last six weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who in 1981 starved to death during a hunger strike in a British jail.
I hope anyone who was interested in seeing this movie got a chance to do so, and I apologize for not doing more to bring it to your attention if you didn’t. If you did see it, perhaps you can tell me whether it’s extended depiction of a man’s slow, painful death as excruciating as I have heard. But I’m just afraid to let those images get inside my head, forever.
The film version of The Road, originally scheduled to hit theaters last fall, was postponed for what has been reported as additional post-production work. It was directed by John Hillcoat, the Australian filmmaker who has been a longtime collaborator of Nick Cave (you may have seen their 2006 revisionist western The Proposition). I think he’s a fine choice who is unlikely to water down or sweeten the story any. A final cut was recently seen and praised by Tom Chiarella who wrote in Esquire that, while it is the most important film of the year, “You won’t want to see this one twice.”
I’m not sure if I’ll see it once. Meanwhile, here’s the newly-released trailer which, in the grand tradition of the Weinstein brothers (whose Dimension Films will release The Road on October 16), has been accused by fans of the book of misrepresenting the movie to drag in a more mainstream audience.
I DID see HUNGER!!! I was involved somewhat in the Noraid push to raise funds during that time, when the boyos came over for one night in New York to raise funds and were arrested and detained for months here in Buffalo by the INA, which, incidentally, gave them ample time to travel all over the country to speak and raise funds. One of them, Danny Morrison, is now Secretary of the Bobby Sands Trust; the other, Owen Carron, replaced Bobby Sands as MP of Derry and Fermanagh.
Just background to why it was so important to me to see this film and why you and everyone else who decry the Irish push for freedom should have seen it.
Painful to watch? You bet – even though I knew they were actors. And I still don’t know how they filmed it because those boys were really naked and being beaten! And I don’t know how the lead actor who played Bobby made himself look so skeletal at the final scene. And, of course, there was a lot of exposure of the boys painting their cell walls with their feces. BUT THIS WAS A FILM WORTH SEEING!!!!(even though there were no bouncing boobs or other extolled Hollywood draws.)
The Sinn Fein is much maligned by the press; if this film had been seen by more people, there might be a better understanding of why they acted as they did and how a peace was finally able to be achieved. (Notwithstanding the splinter group now calling themselves the “real Sinn Fein”)
I am sorry you felt you could not watch it. Imagine what it must have been like to live it – and they were all very young – and feel that it was must be done.
Comment by Mary of the Lofti — May 23, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
Thanks for your input. I not sure what you mean by “you and everyone else who decry the Irish push for freedom should have seen it.” I didn’t not see it because of the politics – that’s the reason I bothered to post an apology for not reviewing it in the first place. I just couldn’t face subjecting myself to what sounded like an extremely depressing experience.
Comment by M. Faust — May 23, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
I apologize if I offended your delicate sensibilities. I guess the same reasoning is what allowed the hunger strikes to go on for so long. How nice that you can turn away from it and not be “extremely depressed”. You and most of the world. Just the kind of critic the world needs.
Comment by Mary of the Lofti — May 26, 2009 @ 9:23 am
I haven’t seen “Hunger” yet, but I plan on it. As for “The Road”, I have to say it is one of the most raw, blisteringly beautiful things I have ever read. I think that in 50 years, “The Road” will be required reading for at least college students. It’s the first novel I’ve read that I could legitimately call a work of art. Everyone needs to read this book.
Comment by Liam — June 29, 2009 @ 11:03 am