The Human Body as Political Weapon:

An Interview with Steve McQueen

efore receiving critical acclaim and festival awards last yearfor providingany detailed historicalorpoliticalcontextfor the events portrayed. prehis debut feature film, Hunger-scheduledfor a March 2009 MecQueen even refuses to describe Hunger as a '"political"film, theatricalrelease in the U.S.-Britishfilnmmaker Steve McQueen ferring insteadto characterizehis approachas "humanist." Hunger is a was best known for his museum and art-galleryinstallationsand exhi- decidedly nonpartisan work, not interested in scoring political points (unlike, for example, the tendentious approach of fellow British filmbitions of shortfilms and videos. Many of thre earlierfilms-Bear (1993), Just Above My Head (1996), and Catch (1997)-are experi- maker Ken Loach's 2006 historical treatise on the Anglo-Irish conflict, mental in nature, minimalistin style, often silent, and characterizedby The Wind That Shakes the Barley), consciously attempting to avoid unusual camera angles and points of view. The laterworks, more semni- any "simplistic notion of 'hero, or 'martyr' or 'victim. "' McQueen has documentary in format, explore historical and contemporary social explained that his political ahn with Hunger is "to provoke debate in issues, but in a resolutely nondidactic, nonexplanatory; abstractstyle the audience, to challenge our own morality." This the film decidedly that aims instead at conveying a participatory,sensory experience of does, whether it's to question the morality of a prison officer who routheir subjects, such as Caribs' Leap (2002), on a seventeenth-century tinely batters IRA inmates with his fists while they are restrained by historical event in Grenada,Western Deep (2002), on South African guards, the morality of an IRA gunman who later assassinates that gold miners, or Gravesend (2007), on coltan miners in the Congo. same prison officer with a bullet to the head, the morality of a riotHunger, winner of the InternationalFilm Critics (FIPRESCI) squad policeman who savagely beats defenselessprisonerswith a woodAward and the Canirad'OrAward for Best FirstFeatureFilm at the en truncheon, or even the morality of starving oneself to death as a 2008 Cannes Film Festival, impressively conflates those earlierfihns' political tactic. interests in innovative While Hunger will be attacked by some for esthetics and social themes Telling the Bobby Sat ids story, with a focus romanticizingSands as the in an evocative re-creation filn's "hero," any dispasof the 1981 Hunger Strike on the raw physical e) cperience of prison and sionate viewer will note by Irish Republican Army the hunger strike, wit th the partisan politics that the film is eminently prisoners at the British balanced in showing empaprison ofLongKesh, known replaced by a more t tumanist perspective. "thy "for both prisoners and as the H-Blocks, outside warders. While it never Belfast in Northern Ireland. This campaign, led by twenty-seven-year-old Bobby Sands, was excuses or rationalizes the prison guards' inhumanity, it does imaginathe focus of worldwide media coverage, and, as McQueen explains in tively reveal the corrosive effects-physically, emotionally, and moralthe following interview, made an indelible impression on him, as anr ly-of their behavioron themselves. eleven-year-old growing up in a West London neighborhood who was W1hile many of the fihn's historicalreferences (e.g., the British Govtrying to understandthe seemingly bizarre events. ernment's duplicitous negotiations to end an earlierhunger strike, an After March 1976, when the British Government'sNorthern Ireland ongoing IRA campaign outside tire prison of assassinationsof prison Office instituted a new policy of "criminalization"during the ongoing guards, etc.) and visual details (e.g., the close-up of the "UDA," for conflict known as the "Troubles," the struggleof IRA prisonersforpolit- Ulster Defence Association, tattooed on a guard's knuckles) will resical status, to be recognized as prisoners of war and not as comnnmon onate meaningJidlyfor British and Irish viewers, they will mystify the criminals, intensified within the walls of Long Kesh. Their campaign average, uninformed nzoviegoer. The deliberate choice by McQueen began with the "blanket protest," since they refitsed to wear a prison and coscreenwriterEnda Walsh to forego more specific social and hisuniform and demanded the right to wear their own clothes. This esca- torical contextualization could nevertheless be seen as enabling more lated into the "no wash" and "dirty" protests, the latter of which universal implicationsfor a wider audience. Many viewers, even in involved the smearingof their excrement on the walls of their cells. The Great Britain and Ireland,for example, will readily relate the atrocities prisoners' determined efforts to thwart prison discipline were met in ih Hunger to more contemporaryprisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and turn by increasingharassmentandphysical attacks by the guards.As de Guantdnamo Bay. As screenwriterJorge Semprun once explained his facto political prisoners, the IRA inmates, who were generally despised and director Costa Gavras'sdecision to not specify the Greek context of by their captors as violent terroristsand murderers (although many of tile political assassinationdramatizedin Z, "Let us not try to reassure them, like Sands, had never killed anyone and had received unusually ourselves, this type of thing doesn't only happen elsewhere, it happens harshsentences for relatively minor offenses) were routinely brutalized, everywhere." Or, as .&cQueen himself noted in a recent interview in almostas a means of retribution. Cahiers du cin6ma about the power of cinema to provoke broader For viewers expecting a more conventional, expository narrative debate "A film can perhaps be the point of departurefor something approach (such as Terry George's Some Mother's Son or Les Blair's much bigger." H3), Hunger will be disappointing. Apart from a few basicfacts about Ironically,for a film which othenvise utilizes dialog very sparely, at the "Troubles" and the struggle between IRA prisonersand the British the center of tile neatly delineated tripartitestructure of Hunger is an Government over political status, which are conveyed in some pre-title extended scene featuringan absolute torrent of words, an encounter texts and a few overheard excerpts from radio newscasts and political between Hunger Strike leader Bobby Sands and a Catholic Priest, speeches by MargaretThatcher, the filhnmakers are unconcerned about Father Dominic Moran, which provocatively broaches many of the key

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IRA prisoner Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham) engage in an intense debate over the politics and morality of the hunger strike in this scene from Steve McQueen's debut feature, Hunger.

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religious, historical, and political issues involved in the Hunger Strike. This remarkable, twenty-two minute scene, most of which consists of one uninterrupted take, is powered by the performances of Michael Fassbender as Sands and veteran Irish actor Liam Cunningham as FatherMoran (a fictional amalgamation of several real-life priests, includingFather Denis Faul, a prison reform advocate and frequent visitor to Long Kesh, and Sands's neighborhood curate, FatherSean Rogan). Their conversation, which progresses from awkward small talk, to playful banter, to ideological challenge and counterchallenge, and, finally, to laceratingcriticisms, is clearly the work of McQueen's coscreenwriter,the IrishplaywrightEnda Walsh. This thought-provoking exchange goes a long way, in fact, to coinpensatefor the sketchiness of these issues elsewhere in thefilm. In their fierce battle of wills, we can appreciate the decision of Sands-who felt personally responsiblefor the failure of an earlierhunger strike-to use his body, as the only weapon he has left, as a means of politicalprotest againstan intransigentBritish Government led by the "Iron Lady," the recently elected Prime MinisterMargaretThatcher. We can simultaneously discern the validity of the arguments of the priest who, although he too supports the nationalist cause, sees the absence of any strategic political thinking in Sand's stubborn, self-indulgent decision essentially to commit suicide. Although, politically speaking, thefilm focuses on "the body as site of political warfare," as McQueen has commented, it's also clear that his primary esthetic interest is "to show what it was like to see, hear, smell and touch in the H-block." Hunger is indeed most remarkable, in purely cinematic terms-especially through the all-encompassingvisual perspective of its 2.35:1 wide-screen compositions and creative use of sound effects, ambient noise, and a minimalist musical score-for con-

veying a visceralsense of what it must have been like, for both prisoners and warders, to live or work in the politically charged, savagely violent environment of Northern Ireland's most notoriousprison complex. While Hunger doesn't stint in its frank portrayal of the barbaric atmosphere within the H-Block-includingperiodic beatings by the guards, the gruesome body cavity searchesfor contraband, and the vicious clubbings administered by a squad of riotpolice after a prisoner rebellion. The film is equally notablefor its impressionisticdetails-the long stretches of boredom, maggot-infested cells, a furtive nighttime attempt to masturbatewithout awakeningone's ceUlmate, the ingenious smuggling of messages and other items during prisoners' monitored meetings with wives, girlfriends or relatives, hallways awash in urine and cell walls covered in excrement that must be cleaned up by hazmatsuited prison workers, and the gentle medical ministrationsof a hospital attendantduringSands'sprolonged death watch. In the last third of the film-which portrays Sands's hunger strike, his gradual wasting away, as his body consumes itself, and the agonizing death throes of his final days-Hunger strivesfor a visual poetry of sorts in its cinematic rendering of his failing eyesight and hearingand delirious episodes in which he hallucinates images of himself as a twelve-year-old boy (a poignantvisual echo of a childhood reminiscence related earlierin his conversation with the priest). It's in moments like these that the humanist vision ofHunger truly comes to the fore, making a more universalstatementabout the human tragedy so often created out of these bitter, bloody, and intransigent political conflicts. We spoke with McQueen about Hunger, focusing on its unusual narrative approach and its striking cinematic qualities, in September 2008, when thefilmmaker was in town for screenings of his film at the New York Film Festival.--GaryCrowdus
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Cineaste:In preparingyour screenplay,which deals with an incredibly complex series of historicalevents, you've explained that since you and your coscreenwriter,Enda Walsh, could not "tell everything," you need only "tell enough." A British or an Irish audiencewill be very familiar with these events, and will pick up on all the details and nuances, but were you concerned that a broader internationalaudience might be somewhat clueless? Steve McQueen: No, because as far as I was concerned it was about the essence, the essentials, and not to sort of tick off every box. One has to f6cus and narrow it down to get to the essence ofit, and that's what I wanted to achieve. I think that by doing that more people can relate to it than by trying to convey the entire history of these past events. Cineaste:What sort of research did you do for the filn? McQueen: I went to Northern Ireland two years before I met Enda, and did some research there. Later, when Enda came on board, we went back and did a week of intense interviews with hunger strikers and prison officers. You can't get that kind of information from any other source. I was interested in the information between the words. It was all about the details, such as guys waking up with maggots crawling on the floor underneath them, of how during the summer there were these horrible bluebottle flies all over the place, how it was freezing cold in the winter, or the details of living for four and a half years in a cell covered with excrement and awash with urine, and all the time surrounded by violence. You can't get that kind of information through books and I needed it and wanted it. Cineaste:How did you conceive of the narrativestructure? McQueen: It's really a three-act structure. The only way I can describe it is that it's almost like floating down a river on your back. Basically you're initially taking in and familiarizing yourself with your surroundings. At a certain point it becomes a "Politicians make rapid, and your surroundings become fractured, the interested in how

images become distorted,

After that it becomes a waterfall, with a loss of gravity, through the slow a political film, it death of Bobby Sands. That's the way I wanted to structure it. It's a situation where one has to be led in by a prison guard and then led out by Bobby. While we were researching the film, we came across this comment by Godard that the only way one could film the Holocaust was through the eyes of a guard. Likewise, we wanted to find multiple viewpoints for our story in order to arrive at a better understanding of the situation, and not merely a stereotypical understanding. Cineaste:One of the things that most impressed me aboutthe filn was the very spare use of dialog, and in particularthe avoidance of using dialogfor very obvious and clumsy plot exposition. McQueen: I think viewers are much more intelligent than many screenwriters think. That's why, when I decided I wanted to work with somebody, I didn't want to work with a screenwriter but with a theater writer. After many interviews, Enda Walsh was the one who came through because, for me at least, it's less about the narrative than it is about the abstract, which would have contained some kind of, for lack of a better word, truth. In most movies, as soon as things start, dialog emerges, and I wanted to have a movie where more or less the first forty minutes is in silence, so the viewers' other senses would come to the fore. In that kind of optimum situation, the brain isn't overloaded or overworked, so when dialog does happen at a certain point, the viewer can focus on the dialog in a very sensual and focused way. Cineaste:In this regard, one of the fihn's standout sequences is the long, single-take dialog scene between Bobby Sands and the Catholic priest,FatherDominic Moran. How long does that scene actually run? McQueen: It's one seventeen-and-a-half minute take of Bobby and the priest before we cut to a close-up of Bobby. We shot the scene on an Arriflex camera modified for two-perf film-you know, like Sergio Leone used for his Spaghetti Westerns. Usually 35mm film is

four perforations per frame, but Arri-because more people are shooting on hi-def video and they want to encourage more people to shoot on film-modified this camera for us. It doubles the amount of footage on a roll, twenty minutes instead of the usual ten minutes, so we were able to film the dialog scene in one continuous take. Cineaste:How did you arrive at that esthetic choice? McQueen: Well, if we filmed this conversation we're having now, the camera would be shooting over your shoulder on me, followed by a reverse shot over my shoulder on you. In that case, you wouldn't appear to be talking to me but to the audience, and vice versa. What I wanted was a scene with two people who were having an intimate conversation with each other, where they were getting the action and reaction from each other. At the same time, we backlit them so their faces are virtually in shadow, so what happens is that the audience's ears become much more attuned, their eyes become much sharper, they lean in more because esthetically we're pushing them away from a conversation about the reasons for choosing to die. When I first had the idea' for the scene, I thought of it as like a Connors and McEnroe Wimbledon finals match, where both guys want the same thing but they play differently-one is a serve and volleyer and the other is a baseliner, so each has a way of how they want to win this. Cineaste:How many takes did you do ofthe scene? McQueen: We did four. It was amazing what happened in that room. Of course, the conversation itself was critical and essential to the story and the actors had rehearsed and rehearsed before that, but when the time finally came that they had to do it, the tension in the room really ratcheted up a couple of notches. The focus was intense, it was almost like a tightrope walker's situation, there was that amount of stress. But all that added to the performances but I'm in some way. Isituations Cineaste: Was the character people respond to iF their situations. 1 hat's what it's all of the fictionalpriest based on *1 Father Denis Faul, the about really. I dor .1't think Hungeris Catholic priest at the H-

s a human film."

Blocks during the hunger

strikes? McQueen: Well, we met Faul before he died, but we also talked to several other priests, so the character was actually an amalgamation of a number of priests involved in the events. Cineaste: He really makes a variety of very strong arguments against Sands'sdecision to go oni a hungerstrike to death. McQueen: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we had to go all the way. Both of them are nationalists but one wants the people for the church and the other wants the people for a kind of socialism. Cineaste:Although the filn is likely to be attacked by the Tory press in the U.K. as a glorification of IRA terrorists and hunger strikers, any dispassionateviewer will see that the fihn has as much empathyfor the physical and emotional traunma that the guards,as well as the inmates, are undergoing. McQueen: Absolutely. Cineaste: I was particularlyimpressed, in this regard, with the scene where you focus on a young, obviously nervous and presumably more inexperienced member of the riot squad sent in to the H-Blocks. After joining in the brutalization of the inmates, including a particularly vicious beating and kicking, this young policeman is last seen, shaking and in tears, hiding in a corner away from the continuing violence. How important was that sceneforyou and why? McQueen: It was very important for me because it showed the basic humanity of the situation. It's vitally important that we can reveal ourselves not just as brutes but as human beings in reaction to what we've done. Once you do something like that, it's not like you can just sort of walk away and forget about it. It resonates. It's almost like the frustration of it all-he has to get involved himself, he has to be one of the guys... Cineaste: He plays the role but then he's repulsed by his actions... McQueen: And by himself. So I felt that we needed to have this

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is not just about what scene of him crying, after having kicked and beaten another person, What's interesting for me about this film happened twenty-seven years ago, it's also about what's happening in order to show these people as human beings, not as freaks. Bay and Abu Ghraib. For Cineaste: Why did you decide to use the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, a wide- now, to a certain extent, with Guantdnamo me that's the main accomplishment. I think people, even those on screenformat? and realize that what happened in the HMcQueen: It was Monet's water lilies. I was in Japan and I saw his the right, understand and said, "It has to be this Blocks was particularly shameful. I also think that if they see that the paintings, and I rang my cinematographer people who are looking after or guarding the hunger strikers are kind of frame, I see it now." What happens in that wide-screen portrayed in a right and proper manner, then they'll understand the that when frame is narrative. What I mean by that is that it's so wide situation a little bit better. you put one thing in the frame, you've always got to put another film's principalprotagonists are thing in, and soon two and two becomes four. You always have to Cineaste: One might say that the Bobby Sands, as the leader of the IRA hunger strikers, and Margaret in the frame with something else, so there's sort of put one thing Thatcher, the "Iron Lady," as the leader of the British Government.It always this narrative going on within this full frame. There is also could be said that Hunger this linear situation, with the dramatizes the unstoppable film going on at twenty-four force meeting the immoveable Fi -y"N' frames per second and telling object. a story. But at the same time McQueen: Yes, it's two you can tell another nargig extremes. rative within frames, because Cineaste: Sands's position is the screen format is so wide conveyed primarily in the long that you've always got two or dialog scene with the priest, three things within the whereas Thatcher's position is frame, which is just beauconveyed in a few brief extiful. cerpts from radio broadcasts, Cineaste: The soundtrack of including two of her speeches. the film is quite unusual in Did you consider including . that it doesn't use a trasome of her other more outditional melodic underscore rageous statements to heighten but instead either ambient this conflict even more? noise or a sort of astringent McQueen: No, I didn't think especially minimalism, which, it was necessary. The two toward the end of the film, statements we use-about tends to undercut any easy or the denial of political status manipulativesentiment. for the prisoners and how the McQueen: Well, that's my hunger strike was an appeal want people kind of thing. I to pity-were enough. I also own minds. to make up their liked how her voice almost I don't like music that makes came in like a vapor. And her the viewer say, "Oh, I should voice, even without her feel this now." It's not my image, is so strong, that it's cup of tea. Besides, the film enough. The fact that she's is very lean. I don't want it to heard in the movie only seem decorative or sometwice, and we're having this thing that needs to be filled. conversation about it now, in itself is music, Sound shows how strong and and is enough to actually forceful and iconic that voice forward. I drive the film was. want people to become more Cineaste: There seems to be a aware of themselves while very strong political comthey're watching the film, ponent in much of your work, and therefore the sound Sin whatever medium. Where becomes a necessity. The does that come from? and Gerry Ir Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan, foreground) sound of the police trun- Top: H-Block cellmates Campbell (Liam McMahon). Bottom: Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands McQueen: I suppose it's cheons hitting the shields, smokes "cigarettes" rolled from pages c fthe Bible in Steve McQueen's Hunger. corny to say, but if caring for example, is based on a about people is political, then drumbeat. It's a violent, I'm interested in and that sound raises your heartbeat, and it I'm political. I am not interested in politics per se, aggressive situation, people. Politicians make situations but I'm interested in how people becomes this forward narrative drive-boom, boom, boom!-and it That's what it's all about really. I don't puts you on edge. So it's a question of how you play up the sound. respond to their situations. think Hunger is a political film, it's a human film. Music sometimes can block a lot of things. -Using sound can make Cineaste: Well, it's a political subject but you don't bring a partisan people sensitive to themselves while they're watching the film, so it politicalposition to it. becomes a ffuller experience, and more of a cinematic than a theatriMcQueen: One could say that Shakespeare is political, and cal experience. say that Van Gogh is political, and Cineaste:Films dealing with the IRA, such as Terry George's Some absolutely he is. One could absolutely he is. As an artist it's all about looking around you, at Mother's Son or, more recently, Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes around you, trying to make some sense of it, and the Barley, tend to be attacked, especially by right-wing elements of the what's going on E putting it in one or another shape or form. U.K. press, as "pro-IRA" movies. Do you expect, as a British strikers? filmmaker, to be criticizedforglorifying the hunger Plaza, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001, McQueen: I don't know if they will attack the filn. I hope they will Hungeris distributed bylIFC Films, I I Penn phone (212) 324-8500. see the humanity of the situation. For me it's not about the politics.
CINEASTE, Spring 2009 25

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TITLE: The Human Body as Political Weapon: An Interview with Steve McQueen SOURCE: Cineaste 34 no2 Spr 2009 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://www.cineaste.com/home.html