Hunger
He has a film star's name and his movie Hunger was named best film at the Sydney Film Festival. But don't dare call Steve McQueen a filmmaker, writes Dave Calhoun
Steve McQueen has a reputation for being difficult, which, it turns
out, is a little simplistic - if not entirely untrue. This
Londoner-in-exile - he now lives in Amsterdam
- is supremely confident in a way that can encourage suspicion. As we
sit down in the dining room of Amsterdam's American Hotel, I notice
both of us are removing our jackets and rolling up our sleeves. It
feels as if I'm about to arm-wrestle this hefty, smartly dressed
39-year-old rather than talk about Hunger,
his first work for the cinema and a stark, experimental portrait of
life and death in Northern Ireland's Maze prison in the early 1980s.
McQueen is an outsider in the
film world. He's been a celebrated artist for years and won the Turner
Prize in 1999 for a film installation inspired by Buster Keaton. But in
cinema he's still finding his feet, although he doesn't want to be a
full-time member of the film industry.
He's an artist who's made a film - and that's how he wants it to stay. "The first time I put a foot on a movie set it was my own [film]. I'm not so interested in how other people do it. I'm interested in
seeing their work, possibly, but that's all."
Hunger may be his first work for cinema but McQueen's background in video art
is very evident. Slowly, tenderly, albeit with moments of brutality,
McQueen leads us through the corridors of the Maze, as Republican
inmates campaign to be classed as political prisoners - first by
refusing to wear uniforms, then with a 'dirty' protest and finally by
going on hunger strike. The film's first half is silent and observing,
but then we find a focus - Bobby Sands - and McQueen launches us into
an intense 22-minute scene (17 and a half minutes of which are a single
shot) in which Sands (Michael Fassbender) talks to a priest (Liam
Cunningham) about his plan to starve himself. The camera then moves
into a hospital room with the dying prisoner and stays there. It's
impossible not to notice Fassbender's physical transformation, although
McQueen bristles at the idea of the actor being celebrated for fasting. "This wasn't a vanity trip. It was necessary for the role."
McQueen
is not comfortable with analysis of his film. Several times he protests
that he's not "trying to be clever", as if that would be a bad thing. I
suggest to him that his film is balanced, that he's careful to consider
guards as well as prisoners. "I'm not concerned with balance," he says. "I don't think people are bad in general, but circumstances make them
do what they have to."
I wonder what it was like for McQueen's producers to work with him on Hunger,
a film that was five years in planning - did they nurture and respect
his vision and avoid interfering? "Oh, they did interfere," he says. "Especially when it came to the 17-and-a-half minute take. But I was
adamant. We had a bit of an argy-bargy and then they agreed. They've never seen a 17-and-a-half minute take. But I
knew what I was doing."
Did Hunger feel like a change of hat for McQueen? He's quick to respond, saying
contemporary art is "a more interesting tool", suggesting a certain
disdain for cinema. "At the end of the day, all you can do in cinema is subvert the
form, which is limiting. But, still, it's a beautiful form. And what's
beautiful about it is that everyone knows a story, from Beijing to
Papua New Guinea. Everyone can tell you a story. And so all those
people can come to your movie. Not everyone has grown up with
contemporary art."
Hunger screens from 6 Nov.