Guardian reviews Hunger

parkerpi

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/nov/03/hunger-bobby-sands

I find this article borderline offensive, am I being oversensitive?

EamonnKeane

He's not a historian and has only a vague idea of what he's talking about.

Wasn't the United Kingdom the entity that the IRA was created to destroy?

Doesn't it ever occur to the British film industry's luminaries that Britain's role in The Troubles could also be celebrated, at least occasionally? It was, after all, shaped by the call of duty, rather than misplaced nationalist fervour.

Far from being shocked at seeing the inmates roughed up a bit, I found myself wishing they'd been properly tortured, preferably savagely, imaginatively and continuously.

He also refers to Sands as a "killer", which would be cleared up by five seconds' research on Wikipedia. (he got 14 yrs for handgun possession)

Tar.Aldarion

Bobby's famous 17-minute, single-shot barf of self-justification also failed to move me. He explained that the slaughter of the innocent was necessitated by his desire for a change in the administrative arrangements under which his homeland was governed.

Yeah well, if he thought that he was no better than those he fought.

sligobhoy67

jesus - talk about solid ignorance from start to finish. Disagree with the subject matter by all means but if you are going to have an attempt at being a film critic at least check that in at the door for 90 minutes eh!?

Going to see it myself tommorrow

lostexpectation

the eoin harris of the guardian it seems. advocating torture is sacking offence if i ever saw one.

Amnesiac_ie

It's a blog; an opinion-piece come film-review and not the formal print review that was published in The Guardian.

Peter French (one of my favourite critics) gave the film a five star rating in his October 31st review.

Cox is an opinionated commentator and though I do not agree with everything he says I do not think his views are entirely invalid. There is a strong movement both in Ireland and Britain to commemerate and celebrate the lives of people who carried out extraordinary evil and murderous acts of terrorism. I would hope the film "Hunger" strikes a middle ground and debates sparked by extreme opinions such as Coxs tend to be much more interesting than the initial spin.

donaghs

Cox sees himself as some sort of "Jeremy Clarkson of Cinema Reviews", so bascially he always trying to wind someone up.

When I read the review, I thought it looked a bit out of place on the Guardian, so I googled some more of his articles. They are all quite opinionated, always neeedling someone.

That said, it could be interesting to see a film made from the perspective of a British soldier.

On the other hand, as with Hunger. I probably wouldn't see it as I currently find Northern Irish topics boring and depressing. Have to be in the right mood.

evil-monkey

Siobhain Butterworth gave him a bit of a spanking over it;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/10/readers-editor-david-cox

I wouldn't worry about plebs like him. Not worth the bother.

lostexpectation

i really don't see the difference between a blog review and a review, its their paper, and they shouldn't allow people to advocate torture in it, even rhetorically.

i really don't care for this misguided idea of balance peapers are getting these days, putting in steyn or the other irish times american worshipping guy,its like myers said on the panel he finds the stupidist thing to say and the defends it to the hilt, sorry thats not balance or journalism.

RichTea

Wow, didn't expect that sort of language from a writer from the Guardian.

A normally left-leaning paper advocating torture. Well I'll be...

Never seen the film myself so I can't comment but from the quotes I see in this thread here some of them do make sense and I can see where he's coming from but the wishing for torture etc etc is a bit much.

kraggy

I'd be more concerned with the following paragraph:

Why? Over the ages, plenty of nations have mistreated others. Something about Ireland, however, seems to inspire a particular pang of vicarious remorse in a certain kind of Brit. Perhaps it's all to do with the air of Celtic romance that seems to envelop the Irish even when they're at their most vicious. Empathising with their long story of oppression appears to give some of the mainland's self-righteous a pleasing sense of moral superiority over their less sensitive fellow-countrymen.

No wonder some people I met when living England were surprised to hear that I use the Euro when shopping at home.

lostexpectation

what the story with guardian these days

they had to remove an article about all the people in he cimate camp in the uk being genocidal eco-terroists without any proper sources.

http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/victory-observer-withdraws-eco-terrorism-story/

you had mary kenny article in the the there last week a watered down version of the indo article where she claimed atheism killed baby p !

then there was nick cohen who gone so far left he's right again, ti think the phrase cruisemissile left was named after him.

there was their reporters repeating the everything they got from uk spooks in the run up to the iraq war.
http://www.mwaw.net/2008/04/21/alton/

doubting in south america
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Carroll-in-wonderland-how-the

it was probably always like this

Dob74

WTF that was the racist thing I have seen in along time. What's next Nelson Mandella still owes the South African gov money for 30 years of free bread and board.

martinstuart

Forget about him. He's one person. What are YOUR views? Have you seen it?

To try and understand him... he's, of course, living in a country where, unlike the living Irish living in the Republic, all the people lived from the early 70s to the mid 90s under the genuine threat of being bombed or maimed to death while going about their daily lives, such as simply going to their local working-class pub for a pint with their mates.

(Of course people in the North lived under that threat, and more, for years, both protestants and catholics alike.)

But that doesn't justify his advocating torture. We all have to learn how to forgive, that is the lesson of the movie.

martinstuart

It's great. I saw it with a group of people and while younger people were thinking it was pro-IRA I thought it was balanced.

Beautifully shot, it makes you feel and hopefully think. Why such brutality from all sides?

Obviously if you are treated like animals you will respond like animals. Sad reality of the Troubles was that so many people were treating others like animals. A vicious circle. Swirling fast.

People were to some extent dehumanised.

Thank God some people, enough people, forgave. And so they saw the "other" as a person of (at least some) value. Everyone involved still needs lots of support--comfort, reassurance, and prayers.

SirHenryGrattan

Dob74 wrote: »

WTF that was the racist thing I have seen in along time. What's next Nelson Mandella still owes the South African gov money for 30 years of free bread and board.

Sadly I would have to agree with this poster. I have returned to work and travel in Europe after spending some years in Australia and I have to say the the level of anti Irish racism in the UK media is palpable. Even today there was a racist joke in the Mail mocking the dioxin contamination. There is never any positive coverage about Ireland in either the news or print medial. Negative stories get front page treatment. I thought that after ten years of relative peace in Northern Ireland things might have changed but no.

I think that anti-Irishism is ingrained in English culture and is the result of hundreds of years of conflict between two ethenic groups. It will be probably take another couple of hundred years of cultural mingling for attitudes to change or perhaps even longer given that I keep reading articles about how English Catholics in England have finally "come in from the cold" and been accepted.

jdivision

well the FT praised the Irish govt's response. everybody knows the mail is virulently anti-Irish but most of the others are fine. i think the rest of your points have no basis in fact TBH

SirHenryGrattan

jdivision wrote: »

well the FT praised the Irish govt's response. everybody knows the mail is virulently anti-Irish but most of the others are fine. i think the rest of your points have no basis in fact TBH

Try living here. I would like to see an analysis of reporting in the British media. Maybe someone looking for a PHD topic might oblige.

jdivision

I haven't lived there but I spend a lot of time there and read a number of their newspapers on a daily basis. Have a number of friends who live there too and they see little if any evidence of any such "racism", or xenophobia. That's not to say it doesn't happen towards other nationalities but not towards the Irish anymore I would venture.

Snickers Man

SirHenryGrattan wrote: »

Try living here. I would like to see an analysis of reporting in the British media. Maybe someone looking for a PHD topic might oblige.

Been done already. Several times. A lady called Liz Curtis has brought out a couple of books on the topic. Such as this one whose title is self explanatory and another more generic one called "Nothing but the same old story" also available here.


Thing is not to over react. You can't expect English people to feel sympathetic towards the IRA, you know the people who blew up their bandstands and killed their horses.

From my time living over there, I found they were pretty much a live and let live kind of people. Except at football matches of course. There, it all came out like puss.

But most of the time, they were fine.