There is something very cutting about Hunger; a purely visual quality to the picture that stirs an emotional reaction in the viewer. Director Steve McQueen, no relation to the actor that starred in Bullitt and The Great Escape, comes from more of a video artist background than a narrative filmmaking one. In his first feature film he tests perceptions of prisoner treatment, acceptable loss and the contention of dying for what you believe in. It’s stacked with a powerful and rich visual sense, and McQueen doesn’t make it easy with long stretches of dialogue-less segments, and one really long shot of a single conversation.

The film centres around events at the Maze prison in 1981, a hot bed of prisoner activism as captured members of the Irish Republican Army fight for political status. The real-to-life events follow Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), the prisoner that led the hunger strike that he eventually died from after suffering the extreme effects of starvation. Immediate events leading up to the hunger strike are also shown, including the “no wash” protest where prisoners refused to use the communal showers and toilets and voluntarily lived in perpetual squalor in their own small cells. Told in a kind of documentary style, Hunger also pushes some of the most disturbing visuals ever put to film.

And Hunger is truly a work of unmitigated art; McQueen seems less concerned with telling the story of the hunger strike and more obsessed over how best to visually tell it. If you are of the opinion that words count, then Hunger is surely an example of the strong silent type. Entire sections play out without a line of dialogue, as if McQueen were making a silent movie. For this, Hunger doesn’t quite seem like a movie in how 99 per cent of the typical movie audience understand the term. On a number of levels, the film’s a test; a test of endurance, taste and punishing imagery that’s often difficult to watch.

Though the film is called Hunger¸ it takes nearly an hour to get to Sands’ final, desperate stand for political status. It begins with the film’s longest stretch of dialogue: a conversation between Sands and a priest discussing the prisoner’s plan to starve himself into status with the support of others being held in the Maze. The camera holds steady for 22 minutes, and is never cut as Sands and priest go back and forth. It’s one of those rare movie moments where the director is practically divorced from the onscreen action, but you have to admire McQueen’s audacity in taking the majority of the film’s talking and get it all done in a single shot.

Hunger is going to be one of those movies they teach in film class I think. Sure it’s stylish, but it’s stylish in service to the story. It’s a cinematic dare; is there only so much of seeing prisoners smear their own feces on the wall, or hiding contraband in various, uncomfortable orifices you can take? And that’s to say nothing of the brutal, realistic result of a man slowly wasting away from hunger. This is a compelling work, and I think also it’s a compelling work. Anyone interested in film and filmmaking owes it to themselves to see Hunger. And anyone interested in just seeing one of the most audacious films of the year, should definitely see Hunger.