Hunger

This 2008 film from the artist Steve McQueen is.....well..... the best British film for generations? One of the best films, full stop, of the past decade? Frankly, it will take us a bit more time before we can categorise it. For now, we know we have seen a genuine work of art that leaves our heads barely hanging onto our necks.
This film is exceptionally beautiful. Every shot of the snow, every long lingering shot. The shit. The crack on the ceiling, wall, leading to the young boy's face. It has a visual sense, with its still cameras and focus on inanimate objects, that shows what film should be about; the beauty of everything, how everything lives, how even a stretch of discarded wire will speak.
This film is an example that the long shot does not make a realist film. McQueen's visuals and choice of narrative material mean that montage is a key aspect, no matter how long each shot lasts. By sticking so long on the sweeping, for example, McQueen has given an image something not in the image itself. A wonderful subversive creation of beauty from the normal viewing experience.
The two aspects that will always be commented on are the single take of multiple minutes, and what Fassbender does to his body. The latter is incredible, we'll leave questions of its necessity for elsewhere. The former works well, becomes beautiful, but also oddly enough emphasises how this is not a relaist film; the script is poetic rather than real, the rythm isn't entirely natural. The performances are not screen performances, nearly.
Politically, this film gives us all angles, coming down on one side then the other, not so much sitting on the fence as having a full foot buried on either side (it's at times a painful watch). Can this film be critiques for aethetic formalism, for the artistic invention superarrogating the political consequences? It's not like McQueen doesn't show us gritty reality. He also just shows how strange and beautiful and not-at-all-of-this-world the world really is.
This film has reached us like a thin line of lightening, a thunderbolt from the lithest and most beautiful deity. It stuns.