Matthew's Journal

We've just been to see Hunger, the recent film about Bobby Sands' hunger strike. Given how many prizes this film has won, it's remarkably hard to track down! Warwick Arts Center did the honours, in a small cinema, with about a dozen people in the audience.

It's a strong film, which really doesn't pull its punches - in terms of the brutality of the prison regime, the damage that hunger striking does to Sands' body, or the violence in wider society. It's really quite unpleasant in places, and I'm a little surprised it is only certificate 15 as a result.

I'm not quite sure what I make of it, or of what Hunger was trying to say - the scene where Sands and his priest argue about the rights and wrongs of hunger striking to death is inconclusive. David Davies MP condemned the public fund that paid for some of the post-production work, on the basis that Hunger was "sympathetic to the IRA", and I have to wonder if he actually watched the film. I think Hunger reminds us (if the memories of 25 years ago have faded already) that the Troubles harmed people on both sides of Northern Ireland, and that there was good and evil on both sides too. The way Margaret Thatcher's broadcasts are heard at points in the action are apposite reminders of how remote she was to what was going on; I think Hunger wants to point to the humanity of the people concerned.

Worth seeing if you have the chance, but not if you're feeling at all fragile.