Ow. Ow. Ow.
First off, this isn't the David Bowie picture with Catherine Deneuve.
This is the happy go lucky feel good story of the hunger strikes in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland back in 1981. The most notable casualty was Bobby Sands, but 9 others died with him before the prisoners demands were met.
This film was brutal and almost silent except for one 30 minute scene in the middle (it felt like forever) where the camera never moved from the two-shot of Bobby Sands and his priest as they talk about the upcoming Hunger Strike and why it was necessary. Up to that point it was just one grim shot after grim shot of what it was like to be in the H-Block. The prisoners are all naked because they consider themselves political prisoners rather than just criminals and should get to wear their own clothes rather than prison issue uniforms. The walls of their cells are covered in feces as a protest. They pile up their food in the corner to hide contraband. The dump their urine under the doors in the cell into the main hallway for the guards to clean up.
It's unrelenting and the shots go and on. From the guard trying to wash the blood off his hands from beating the prisoners to girls carrying radios in their vaginas for the inmates.
No musical soundtrack either.
Fassbinder plays Bobby Sands and it looks like he lost just as much weight as Bobby in the latter half of the film. I can't believe it was healthy for him. The worst moment in a sea of worst moments is near the end of Bobby's hunger strike. Sands is soaking in a tub barely conscious. Their is a shift change and the sympathetic male nurse leaves and the new male nurse comes in. The sympathetic nurse has sat away from the tub to give Sands some privacy. But the nurse takes the chair and plops down right next to the tub. Sands looks over and clearly see tattooed across the new nurse's knuckles the letters 'UDA'. This was the force that was fighting the IRA, which Sands was a part of.
Just brutal.
You'd really want to swim in the squalor to watch this film. ON multiple occasions I went to turn it off and didn't.
So, good times!
First off, this isn't the David Bowie picture with Catherine Deneuve.
This is the happy go lucky feel good story of the hunger strikes in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland back in 1981. The most notable casualty was Bobby Sands, but 9 others died with him before the prisoners demands were met.
This film was brutal and almost silent except for one 30 minute scene in the middle (it felt like forever) where the camera never moved from the two-shot of Bobby Sands and his priest as they talk about the upcoming Hunger Strike and why it was necessary. Up to that point it was just one grim shot after grim shot of what it was like to be in the H-Block. The prisoners are all naked because they consider themselves political prisoners rather than just criminals and should get to wear their own clothes rather than prison issue uniforms. The walls of their cells are covered in feces as a protest. They pile up their food in the corner to hide contraband. The dump their urine under the doors in the cell into the main hallway for the guards to clean up.
It's unrelenting and the shots go and on. From the guard trying to wash the blood off his hands from beating the prisoners to girls carrying radios in their vaginas for the inmates.
No musical soundtrack either.
Fassbinder plays Bobby Sands and it looks like he lost just as much weight as Bobby in the latter half of the film. I can't believe it was healthy for him. The worst moment in a sea of worst moments is near the end of Bobby's hunger strike. Sands is soaking in a tub barely conscious. Their is a shift change and the sympathetic male nurse leaves and the new male nurse comes in. The sympathetic nurse has sat away from the tub to give Sands some privacy. But the nurse takes the chair and plops down right next to the tub. Sands looks over and clearly see tattooed across the new nurse's knuckles the letters 'UDA'. This was the force that was fighting the IRA, which Sands was a part of.
Just brutal.
You'd really want to swim in the squalor to watch this film. ON multiple occasions I went to turn it off and didn't.
So, good times!
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm