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Smörgåsbord of weekend London Film Festival films. | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback
Hunger by Alan Crowe (2.00 / 0) #1 Tue Oct 21, 2008 at 11:14:27 AM EST
I saw a trailer for Hunger on Sunday, preceding Burn After Reading. I'm curious about the hunger strikes, but I got the impression from the trailer that the film, Hunger, would do nothing to satisfy my curiosity.

I see myself as a "fringe" personality, susceptible to the lure of cults. This manifests in various ways. Some are positive. I'm a smug Lisp Weenie. I enjoyed my time as an undergraduate, studying mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the cloistered cultish atmosphere was part of the pleasure. Some are weird such as my membership of the Society for Barefoot Living and being a Furry. My involvement with a small Buddhist cult, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, is clearly religious.

I was puzzled by the popular response to 9/11 because people saw the hijackers as inhuman. Getting caught up in a cult, losing the plot, and doing something very wicked, struck me as a very human thing to do, something that I consciously work at avoiding. There were training camps in Afghanistan with 1000 members, as large as Trinity College. You start at the back of the crowd, idolizing the small, hard core up on the stage. You gain status by denouncing America, learning to fire an AK47, learning to fire an RPG-7, going off to fight but not seeing action, going off to fight and seeing action, going of to fight and discharging your weapon, albeit from a ineffective range. At each stage you gain status and move towards centre stage. At each stage more of the crowd is behind you. Little by little you become more invested, the glue that sticks you to the conveyor belt becomes more set, doubts about the path you are traveling less thinkable.

I see a psychological unity between Al Queada, the harmless cults I'm part of, and cults such as Heaven's Gate, the Solar Temple, and Jim Jones' People's Temple. Commitment buys status. Outsiders and losers can be somebody. Yeah! I don't doubt that being an IRA man shares in that psychological unity.

So I would be very interested in watching a film about Bobby Sands saw through the cloak of being a "Freedom Fighter" and looked at the psychological processes. How do you fight off awareness? Are friends who might say "its not worth it" silenced by social pressures? Are they dropped, and if so how is the pain of losing friends blunted so that it does not serve as a warning? Does deeper involvement with the cause mean that they are left behind at an early stage?

There is a rival narrative, that believes in causes and the brave men who fight on one side or the other. Watching a film derived from that perspective would run directly counter to my goal, which is to strengthen my ability to see through the illusions of cults and causes.

What line does Hunger take?

Film ambigous,stays with freedom fighter narrative by Tonatiuh (4.00 / 1) #2 Tue Oct 21, 2008 at 02:54:10 PM EST
The psychological meat of the movie is the central dialogue between Bobby Sands and a Catholic priest friend of  his, during a visit of the priest Sands announces his intention to start a hunger strike, with the full purpose to see it all through to the ultimate consequences.

Bobby Sands is portrayed as somebody that clearly believed on the fairness of his cause, I seem to remember that at some point the "freedom fighter" phrase is used, so to me there is no question that the director wants Bobby Sands to act and believe that he is a freedom fighter that needs no ulterior motives to sacrifice himself to a cause that he sees as just, his portrayal on the film clearly uses the traditional narrative in which everybody takes sides they consider just.

This is not to say that Bobby Sands is presented as an unthinking person just following orders, the movie insinuates the IRA's leadership was not necessarily very supportive of the hunger strike, which could have stolen  their thunder. During the dialogue with the priest Sands  questions the IRA  leadership's course of action as well as the different ways to look at Catholicism, keeping in mind he is just going to start a hunger strike that will eventually lead to his demise, a capital sin of his faith.

Sands' priest tries to dissuade him from this course of action using several weighty reasons, so the implication is that there was not a clear cut opinion about the matter,  Sands' position is made more ambivalent by this context.

The movie is really complex, the violent context is portrayed superbly, it is  surprising how little dialogue there is, except for the long one between Sands and his priest, for long stretches it feels like an old silent movie,  I think that the traditional narrative of people understanding their historical roles as  fighters for a good cause is used at all times.


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Smörgåsbord of weekend London Film Festival films. | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback
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