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Review: Hunger (2008)
This movie was hard to watch but it was so powerful in the way that it was filmed. As someone who only had superficial knowledge of the Troubles conflicts, this movie showed a very personal side of the conflict in a way that was very unique.
I'm going to go into more detail under the cut, but I would definitely recommend this movie, even to those who don't know much about the Troubles. The way it was filmed just left such a big impression on me.
Spoilers.
As a disclaimer, these are my first impressions right after I'd finished watching the movie. Based on the fact that I've only watched this movie once, and also because I didn't have much background knowledge on the historical context, I will be missing good points in my write up, both in terms of the story and in terms of how it was filmed. But this is definitely one of those movies that I'll want to look up in forums and such because I just felt that this movie was so rich.
Story
The political background was presented to the audience in the beginning of a movie through a bit of text. What I got from these summaries were that many people were arrested for their actions as part of the IRA. However, they did not see themselves as prisoners but as people who were carrying out acts for the greater good.
Gillen was a new prisoner who didn't agree that he was a prisoner but nonetheless didn't cause a fuss when he was escorted to his prison cell. When he arrived, the cell was absolutely filthy. The walls were smeared with excrement and there was food rotting in the corner of the cell. His cellmate, Campbell, was participating the no wash protest, and Gillen soon joined as well.
During this time, we also saw that many prisoners had help from their family members when passing notes and other useful tools, such as a radio that Campbell received from his girlfriend.
In addition, the relationships between the guards and the prisoners were terrible. Lohan was a guard and we saw that every day, he'd wash his hands. We didn't know why he was washing his hands until we saw the scene in which he and other guards had to violently subdue Sands so that they could cut his hair and throw him in a bath. Since he washed his hands every day in the same manner, it was implied that he dealt with this every day. The way this was revealed left a big impression on me, as Lohan washing his hands was one of the first shots we saw in the movie.
The unsanitary conditions of the prison escalated to a point where the prisoners were moved to a newer cleaner place and given civilian clothes to wear. However, they rioted, as presumably their political demands were not met.
Bobby Sands entered the picture as the leader of the next movement. He had a chat with a priest, and he told him about his intention to lead the next Hunger Strike. This was a very long conversation, and covered a manner of different topics, but it was also the first and only time we had an explicit conversation between characters. From this conversation, we learned a lot about Sands and I think it's safe to say that some of his fellow prisoners agree with him. In their conversation, Dom (the priest) pointed out that Sands was probably already planning to die. I believed that Sands was doing his last rites because he'd intended to go through with his Hunger Strike and die for the cause.
After this long conversation, Bobby grew frailer and frailer, and it was tough to watch. He started hallucinating about his youth, and his parents moved in to the prison to see him to his end. This ending was inevitable, because we knew that Bobby had planned this from the start.
At the end, there was some more text explaining the happenings after Bobby had died. Now, I didn't know that Bobby Sands was a real person, so knowing that this story was based on history made it more chilling.
Production
Showing vs. telling
I really admired this movie for how little dialogue there was. There was some basic dialogue, but the vast majority of the story was told through the camera work. This is why the movie was kind of slow paced. It required that the audience follow the camera and understand what the story or the characters were trying to tell us.
We had many scenes of characters doing mundane everyday things, but the point was not the act but why they were doing or how it came to be. For example, the first scene in which Lohan left for work already told me several things about his life. His hands were constantly battered so he probably had a tough job. When he went out of his house, he looked up and down the street and under his car, just in case there was any suspicious activity or bombs/tracking devices on his car. His wife looked out of the window with a worried look, worrying that the car would explode. All of these pointed to the tense environment. Even though Lohan wasn't part of the IRA and was technically an authority figure, he was also living in constant fear.
There was only one scene of extended dialogue, and this was the infamous scene between Bobby Sands and the priest Father Dominic Moran. Everything we'd seen in the film up until kind of built up to that conversation. Although Bobby didn't have a big role in the movie at that point, he was a representative of the prison population. In this conversation, we learned a lot about him and how he felt. As for Father Moran, he was trying to de-escalate the situation, but his compromising behaviour was exactly the type of thing that Sands and the other prisoners did not like. Sands was tired of compromise and negotiation. I'll talk more about such topics below, but the fact is, this dialogue gave us a lot of information in a short period of time, information that would help us interpret Bobby's feelings both before and after the conversation.
Shock value
During the no wash protest, I admit I was pretty disgusted by the filthy conditions of the prison cell. I guess it was especially disgusting because the prisoners were actively being filthy as a form of protest.
During the Hunger Strike, it was really tough watching Bobby grow weaker and weaker. I don't know how much weight Michael Fassbender lost, but it was clear that he was incredibly weak.
I am a very squeamish person, so these sorts of shots did leave a big impression on me, but I think that was the point. When the Hunger Strike began, there was a newscaster type of voice explaining that the IRA went on a Hunger Strike in order to invoke pity, and it did so successfully for me.
Acting
This is one of those movies that didn't really require acting in the traditional sense (sorry, I don't know how to explain it). Basically, I think the actors just had to be good/okay and the camera did the rest of the work.
The moments that required the most artistry was definitely the conversation between Bobby and Father Moran. Most of it was shot from an angle that had both of them in frame, but there was also a few minutes in which the camera was focused on Bobby's face as he continued his story. Wikipedia tells me that Liam Cunningham moved in with Michael Fassbender so they could get better at this dialogue and I don't doubt that it required a lot of skill and focus to master.
Characters
Bobby Sands
Despite being the main character of this movie, Bobby didn't have a big part for the first third of the movie or so. The first third was devoted to the audience getting used to the conditions of the prison.
During this movie, we didn't really hear much about politics. Yes, everything was done for a political reason, but it felt like something that was kind of in the backseat. Like Father Moran, I felt that perhaps Bobby Sannds was more interested in becoming a martyr than he was about the cause.
That being said, I do still think that Sands believed in the cause (political status). It was just that he understood he was just one person so he knew he had limits as to what he could do.
Sands narrated the story of how he drowned the deer that was in pain, but he did not regret it. He insisted that his consciences was always clear and I don't doubt that this is also the case with the Hunger Strike. He felt that gaining political status was right. As long as something was right, there wasn't any reason why dying for such a cause was wrong.
By the end of the movie, Sands became less expressive because he was so weak, so we weren't really able to get much from him in terms of his thoughts and feelings. Most of that came directly during his conversation with Father Moran.
Sands started hallucinating about his younger self, probably him at the age when he had to drown the deer. He'd told Father Moran that he was punished for killing the deer, but he'd gained the respect of the other boys. So Sands understood that he had to do something drastic and "unreasonable" in order to just be taken seriously, and that is what he did by going on his Hunger Strike. However, in the end, we found out that while the prisoners' demands had been met, the only thing they truly wanted was never granted (political status).
Father Dominic Moran
Father Moran was referred to as Dom during the conversation with Sands, so I presume Dom had a pretty friendly rapport with the prisoners. Of course, this was necessary if you wanted to keep your job at a prison full of unsatisfied prisoners.
In an earlier scene, the prisoners were at mass but no one was paying attention to the pastor. They were probably only there to socialize. So I do think that Dom was probably respected in another way, separate from his position as a representative of the church.
I think that Dom was supposed to appear to be a very reasonable guy. He kept pushing for Sands to look at things reasonably, to consider negotiation, and to think of his family including his little son. I would probably have agreed with Father Moran.
That being said, I think that these types of mindsets were also what were keeping the IRA from getting their demands met. The IRA were tired of negotiation because they never got anywhere, so they had to take drastic measures.
Raymond Lohan
At first, Lohan seemed like a friendly guy. We saw him go into work, tell jokes with his coworkers, etc.
Over the course of the film, we came to see that he was not as nice as we would've though. He was pretty violent and assaulted Sands when trying to cut his hair and forcibly clean him in the bath. Later, we saw that Lohan and other prison officers and riot guards hauled prisoners out and forcibly inspected their rectums and mouths for illegal items before letting them go. These were pretty graphic scenes and tough to watch.
Later, Lohan went to visit his mother in a retirement home. She was pretty unresponsive, and remained so even when Lohan was shot dead by an IRA assassin.
I think Lohan was supposed to show that normal people were part of the problem. I don't know if Lohan was the kind of person who thrived with power and enjoyed being cruel to the prisoners. In any case, he didn't act like that outside of the prison, and this divide signalled a big problem that there was something wrong within the prison and the relationship between the guards and the prisoners.
However, I don't know enough about these types of situations to say more about Lohan's character.
Gerry Campbell
Gerry was the roommate who was participating in the no wash protest. I presume he was the guy who "showed Davey the ropes" in terms of how the IRA prisoners were fighting back against the guards in their own ways.
Davey Gillen
We first saw the prison through the eyes of Gillen. He told the officer that he didn't agree that he was a prisoner and thus would not wear the uniform of a prisoner. So he just walked around naked.
When he first arrived in his cell, it was a very shocking scene, but soon after we saw him fall comfortably in rhythm with Gerry. He was dumping his food in the corner with all the other sludge there, and rioting with the other IRA prisoners when they were moved to new cells.
Themes
There are a lot of themes that I think I probably missed on. The dialogue between Sands and Father Moran was pretty long and I'm almost sure that I missed a few things. But I just wanted to write down my first impressions, as going back and rewatching the conversation would take quite a lot of time.
Politics
I'd read a comment that said that while this was a great movie, it wasn't the best political movie. The way I interpreted that was that this movie didn't really focus on the politics and invoke a strong feeling about political action.
The actual politics were only mentioned through text at the beginning and the end. While I did pity Sands for the pain he was going through, I don't know that I was meant to necessarily agree with his extreme methods.
I think this movie was more about the personal aspect rather than making a big political statement.
Shock value
I mentioned this above, but the graphic scenes were definitely hard to watch. First, we saw disgusting living quarters. Then, we saw extremely violent assaults of prison officers on prisoners. And then, we saw Sands becoming so extremely weak that it was difficult to keep my eyes on the screen.
I don't doubt that reality was just as hard to see, but as the newscaster voice said, Sands was aiming to invoke pity to get what he wanted. In this regard, I think the film succeeded. I did pity all of the prisoners who were making themselves suffer for their cause.
Violence
The discussion on shock value reminded me of something else the newscaster voice said. They said that this Hunger Strike was the IRA invoking violence on themselves. I'm guessing the IRA were always portrayed to be super violent, which makes sense considering only the violent stuff would even make it to the news.
While I do agree that starving oneself is invoking violence on yourself, I did also think that the phrasing of the newscaster was a bit of propaganda at work. They'd presumably always been referring to the IRA as violent people, and even if they were only hurting themselves, they had to continue the narrative that IRA only dealt in extremes.
The thing is, extremes seemed to be the only thing that work because as I'll discuss below, compromise seemed to be completely ineffective.
Compromise
During the conversation, Father Moran was pushing for negotiation but Sands would not have it. We see this in politics everywhere. When you're dealing with someone who won't budget, compromise will NOT work and only extreme methods seem to invoke any response, if not from the other party then from third party onlookers.
Martyrdom and conscience
During the conversation it was clear that Sands was not afraid of dying if he felt he was doing the right thing. He told Father Moran that his conscience was always clear. Sands was the kind of person who felt that the ends justified the means, whether he was inflicting violence on others or himself.
Like Father Moran, I was a little suspicious that perhaps Sands was more obsessed with actual martyrdom than the cause, but seeing as how Sands was a results-oriented guy, it was probably no use to try to bring an emotional aspect to it (e.g. asking Sands to think about his son).
Religion
Most of the characters in the film were probably religious, though I don't claim to know the differences between the various Catholic groups. Like most effective pastors, Father Moran offered spiritual guidance but did so without citing God directly. While he was trying to reel Sands back in, he wasn't really talking about God that much, but it was clear that he was on God's side, and this came out at the end, when he and Sands discussed God's punishment for him.
Father Moran also brought up the fact that his brother had advanced far in his career at a young age, likely because he was good at talking and networking. I think Father Moran was hinting at the fact that sometimes it's not about the truth but how you present it. Father Moran's brother might not have been the most spiritually enlightened, but he knew how to talk his way into that position. I wonder if Father Moran was trying to push this narrative to Sands who didn't feel that talking his way into getting what he wanted was possible anymore.
There was also a lot of religious imagery. When Lohan died in his mother's lap, I kind of felt reminded of those pieces of art where Jesus was laying in suffering with Mary. In addition, when Sands was carried out of the bath by the UDA member, he was kind of sprawled out, and a cloth was laying across his lower body. That scene really made Sands look like Jesus in artwork, in which he lay dying, but for the greater good.
I think religious imagery was inevitable in this movie because of how many people from Ireland and Northern Ireland are Catholic.
Overall
This was an excellent movie. It was hard to watch, and I admit that I don't have a deep connection with the Troubles conflict. As a movie, there were so many things about how it was made that set it apart and left a lasting impression on me. I would definitely recommend this movie for movie buffs.
I'm going to go into more detail under the cut, but I would definitely recommend this movie, even to those who don't know much about the Troubles. The way it was filmed just left such a big impression on me.
Spoilers.
As a disclaimer, these are my first impressions right after I'd finished watching the movie. Based on the fact that I've only watched this movie once, and also because I didn't have much background knowledge on the historical context, I will be missing good points in my write up, both in terms of the story and in terms of how it was filmed. But this is definitely one of those movies that I'll want to look up in forums and such because I just felt that this movie was so rich.
Story
The political background was presented to the audience in the beginning of a movie through a bit of text. What I got from these summaries were that many people were arrested for their actions as part of the IRA. However, they did not see themselves as prisoners but as people who were carrying out acts for the greater good.
Gillen was a new prisoner who didn't agree that he was a prisoner but nonetheless didn't cause a fuss when he was escorted to his prison cell. When he arrived, the cell was absolutely filthy. The walls were smeared with excrement and there was food rotting in the corner of the cell. His cellmate, Campbell, was participating the no wash protest, and Gillen soon joined as well.
During this time, we also saw that many prisoners had help from their family members when passing notes and other useful tools, such as a radio that Campbell received from his girlfriend.
In addition, the relationships between the guards and the prisoners were terrible. Lohan was a guard and we saw that every day, he'd wash his hands. We didn't know why he was washing his hands until we saw the scene in which he and other guards had to violently subdue Sands so that they could cut his hair and throw him in a bath. Since he washed his hands every day in the same manner, it was implied that he dealt with this every day. The way this was revealed left a big impression on me, as Lohan washing his hands was one of the first shots we saw in the movie.
The unsanitary conditions of the prison escalated to a point where the prisoners were moved to a newer cleaner place and given civilian clothes to wear. However, they rioted, as presumably their political demands were not met.
Bobby Sands entered the picture as the leader of the next movement. He had a chat with a priest, and he told him about his intention to lead the next Hunger Strike. This was a very long conversation, and covered a manner of different topics, but it was also the first and only time we had an explicit conversation between characters. From this conversation, we learned a lot about Sands and I think it's safe to say that some of his fellow prisoners agree with him. In their conversation, Dom (the priest) pointed out that Sands was probably already planning to die. I believed that Sands was doing his last rites because he'd intended to go through with his Hunger Strike and die for the cause.
After this long conversation, Bobby grew frailer and frailer, and it was tough to watch. He started hallucinating about his youth, and his parents moved in to the prison to see him to his end. This ending was inevitable, because we knew that Bobby had planned this from the start.
At the end, there was some more text explaining the happenings after Bobby had died. Now, I didn't know that Bobby Sands was a real person, so knowing that this story was based on history made it more chilling.
Production
Showing vs. telling
I really admired this movie for how little dialogue there was. There was some basic dialogue, but the vast majority of the story was told through the camera work. This is why the movie was kind of slow paced. It required that the audience follow the camera and understand what the story or the characters were trying to tell us.
We had many scenes of characters doing mundane everyday things, but the point was not the act but why they were doing or how it came to be. For example, the first scene in which Lohan left for work already told me several things about his life. His hands were constantly battered so he probably had a tough job. When he went out of his house, he looked up and down the street and under his car, just in case there was any suspicious activity or bombs/tracking devices on his car. His wife looked out of the window with a worried look, worrying that the car would explode. All of these pointed to the tense environment. Even though Lohan wasn't part of the IRA and was technically an authority figure, he was also living in constant fear.
There was only one scene of extended dialogue, and this was the infamous scene between Bobby Sands and the priest Father Dominic Moran. Everything we'd seen in the film up until kind of built up to that conversation. Although Bobby didn't have a big role in the movie at that point, he was a representative of the prison population. In this conversation, we learned a lot about him and how he felt. As for Father Moran, he was trying to de-escalate the situation, but his compromising behaviour was exactly the type of thing that Sands and the other prisoners did not like. Sands was tired of compromise and negotiation. I'll talk more about such topics below, but the fact is, this dialogue gave us a lot of information in a short period of time, information that would help us interpret Bobby's feelings both before and after the conversation.
Shock value
During the no wash protest, I admit I was pretty disgusted by the filthy conditions of the prison cell. I guess it was especially disgusting because the prisoners were actively being filthy as a form of protest.
During the Hunger Strike, it was really tough watching Bobby grow weaker and weaker. I don't know how much weight Michael Fassbender lost, but it was clear that he was incredibly weak.
I am a very squeamish person, so these sorts of shots did leave a big impression on me, but I think that was the point. When the Hunger Strike began, there was a newscaster type of voice explaining that the IRA went on a Hunger Strike in order to invoke pity, and it did so successfully for me.
Acting
This is one of those movies that didn't really require acting in the traditional sense (sorry, I don't know how to explain it). Basically, I think the actors just had to be good/okay and the camera did the rest of the work.
The moments that required the most artistry was definitely the conversation between Bobby and Father Moran. Most of it was shot from an angle that had both of them in frame, but there was also a few minutes in which the camera was focused on Bobby's face as he continued his story. Wikipedia tells me that Liam Cunningham moved in with Michael Fassbender so they could get better at this dialogue and I don't doubt that it required a lot of skill and focus to master.
Characters
Bobby Sands
Despite being the main character of this movie, Bobby didn't have a big part for the first third of the movie or so. The first third was devoted to the audience getting used to the conditions of the prison.
During this movie, we didn't really hear much about politics. Yes, everything was done for a political reason, but it felt like something that was kind of in the backseat. Like Father Moran, I felt that perhaps Bobby Sannds was more interested in becoming a martyr than he was about the cause.
That being said, I do still think that Sands believed in the cause (political status). It was just that he understood he was just one person so he knew he had limits as to what he could do.
Sands narrated the story of how he drowned the deer that was in pain, but he did not regret it. He insisted that his consciences was always clear and I don't doubt that this is also the case with the Hunger Strike. He felt that gaining political status was right. As long as something was right, there wasn't any reason why dying for such a cause was wrong.
By the end of the movie, Sands became less expressive because he was so weak, so we weren't really able to get much from him in terms of his thoughts and feelings. Most of that came directly during his conversation with Father Moran.
Sands started hallucinating about his younger self, probably him at the age when he had to drown the deer. He'd told Father Moran that he was punished for killing the deer, but he'd gained the respect of the other boys. So Sands understood that he had to do something drastic and "unreasonable" in order to just be taken seriously, and that is what he did by going on his Hunger Strike. However, in the end, we found out that while the prisoners' demands had been met, the only thing they truly wanted was never granted (political status).
Father Dominic Moran
Father Moran was referred to as Dom during the conversation with Sands, so I presume Dom had a pretty friendly rapport with the prisoners. Of course, this was necessary if you wanted to keep your job at a prison full of unsatisfied prisoners.
In an earlier scene, the prisoners were at mass but no one was paying attention to the pastor. They were probably only there to socialize. So I do think that Dom was probably respected in another way, separate from his position as a representative of the church.
I think that Dom was supposed to appear to be a very reasonable guy. He kept pushing for Sands to look at things reasonably, to consider negotiation, and to think of his family including his little son. I would probably have agreed with Father Moran.
That being said, I think that these types of mindsets were also what were keeping the IRA from getting their demands met. The IRA were tired of negotiation because they never got anywhere, so they had to take drastic measures.
Raymond Lohan
At first, Lohan seemed like a friendly guy. We saw him go into work, tell jokes with his coworkers, etc.
Over the course of the film, we came to see that he was not as nice as we would've though. He was pretty violent and assaulted Sands when trying to cut his hair and forcibly clean him in the bath. Later, we saw that Lohan and other prison officers and riot guards hauled prisoners out and forcibly inspected their rectums and mouths for illegal items before letting them go. These were pretty graphic scenes and tough to watch.
Later, Lohan went to visit his mother in a retirement home. She was pretty unresponsive, and remained so even when Lohan was shot dead by an IRA assassin.
I think Lohan was supposed to show that normal people were part of the problem. I don't know if Lohan was the kind of person who thrived with power and enjoyed being cruel to the prisoners. In any case, he didn't act like that outside of the prison, and this divide signalled a big problem that there was something wrong within the prison and the relationship between the guards and the prisoners.
However, I don't know enough about these types of situations to say more about Lohan's character.
Gerry Campbell
Gerry was the roommate who was participating in the no wash protest. I presume he was the guy who "showed Davey the ropes" in terms of how the IRA prisoners were fighting back against the guards in their own ways.
Davey Gillen
We first saw the prison through the eyes of Gillen. He told the officer that he didn't agree that he was a prisoner and thus would not wear the uniform of a prisoner. So he just walked around naked.
When he first arrived in his cell, it was a very shocking scene, but soon after we saw him fall comfortably in rhythm with Gerry. He was dumping his food in the corner with all the other sludge there, and rioting with the other IRA prisoners when they were moved to new cells.
Themes
There are a lot of themes that I think I probably missed on. The dialogue between Sands and Father Moran was pretty long and I'm almost sure that I missed a few things. But I just wanted to write down my first impressions, as going back and rewatching the conversation would take quite a lot of time.
Politics
I'd read a comment that said that while this was a great movie, it wasn't the best political movie. The way I interpreted that was that this movie didn't really focus on the politics and invoke a strong feeling about political action.
The actual politics were only mentioned through text at the beginning and the end. While I did pity Sands for the pain he was going through, I don't know that I was meant to necessarily agree with his extreme methods.
I think this movie was more about the personal aspect rather than making a big political statement.
Shock value
I mentioned this above, but the graphic scenes were definitely hard to watch. First, we saw disgusting living quarters. Then, we saw extremely violent assaults of prison officers on prisoners. And then, we saw Sands becoming so extremely weak that it was difficult to keep my eyes on the screen.
I don't doubt that reality was just as hard to see, but as the newscaster voice said, Sands was aiming to invoke pity to get what he wanted. In this regard, I think the film succeeded. I did pity all of the prisoners who were making themselves suffer for their cause.
Violence
The discussion on shock value reminded me of something else the newscaster voice said. They said that this Hunger Strike was the IRA invoking violence on themselves. I'm guessing the IRA were always portrayed to be super violent, which makes sense considering only the violent stuff would even make it to the news.
While I do agree that starving oneself is invoking violence on yourself, I did also think that the phrasing of the newscaster was a bit of propaganda at work. They'd presumably always been referring to the IRA as violent people, and even if they were only hurting themselves, they had to continue the narrative that IRA only dealt in extremes.
The thing is, extremes seemed to be the only thing that work because as I'll discuss below, compromise seemed to be completely ineffective.
Compromise
During the conversation, Father Moran was pushing for negotiation but Sands would not have it. We see this in politics everywhere. When you're dealing with someone who won't budget, compromise will NOT work and only extreme methods seem to invoke any response, if not from the other party then from third party onlookers.
Martyrdom and conscience
During the conversation it was clear that Sands was not afraid of dying if he felt he was doing the right thing. He told Father Moran that his conscience was always clear. Sands was the kind of person who felt that the ends justified the means, whether he was inflicting violence on others or himself.
Like Father Moran, I was a little suspicious that perhaps Sands was more obsessed with actual martyrdom than the cause, but seeing as how Sands was a results-oriented guy, it was probably no use to try to bring an emotional aspect to it (e.g. asking Sands to think about his son).
Religion
Most of the characters in the film were probably religious, though I don't claim to know the differences between the various Catholic groups. Like most effective pastors, Father Moran offered spiritual guidance but did so without citing God directly. While he was trying to reel Sands back in, he wasn't really talking about God that much, but it was clear that he was on God's side, and this came out at the end, when he and Sands discussed God's punishment for him.
Father Moran also brought up the fact that his brother had advanced far in his career at a young age, likely because he was good at talking and networking. I think Father Moran was hinting at the fact that sometimes it's not about the truth but how you present it. Father Moran's brother might not have been the most spiritually enlightened, but he knew how to talk his way into that position. I wonder if Father Moran was trying to push this narrative to Sands who didn't feel that talking his way into getting what he wanted was possible anymore.
There was also a lot of religious imagery. When Lohan died in his mother's lap, I kind of felt reminded of those pieces of art where Jesus was laying in suffering with Mary. In addition, when Sands was carried out of the bath by the UDA member, he was kind of sprawled out, and a cloth was laying across his lower body. That scene really made Sands look like Jesus in artwork, in which he lay dying, but for the greater good.
I think religious imagery was inevitable in this movie because of how many people from Ireland and Northern Ireland are Catholic.
Overall
This was an excellent movie. It was hard to watch, and I admit that I don't have a deep connection with the Troubles conflict. As a movie, there were so many things about how it was made that set it apart and left a lasting impression on me. I would definitely recommend this movie for movie buffs.