few years ago, in the second half of the nineties to be precise, Peter Greenaway Britain tried to create some controversy about the nature of cinema. For multimedia artist now too has yielded the medium, the art of the moving image, to literature. Thus, the ballast narrative logic, because in traditional narrative greenawayniana meant "little positive beginning to find it. With their ideas tried to claim that enormous debt that the film had (and no doubt it continues to some extent have) with art and that few, very few he said, were aware. Much of what Greenaway shouting seemed to cause a nearby cinema with video art video installation or after something closer to the cosmopolitan gallery to the vulgarity of the multi-room shopping. postmodern provocateur and as a good beginning to discount heads: from classics veneradísimos by tradition to contemporary pop. Few managed to escape from their perspective views. For this writer these thinking aloud were merely deceptions that little echo, fortunately, have.
The Greenaway at that time comes about because the Steve McQueen of Hunger (Hunger, England v Ireland, 2008) reminded me. But let's be clear: it reminded me in a different sense. Now let's put this in perspective: McQueen comes from the area in which Greenaway seems to feel quite comfortable in his element: video art and video installation (in the case of Greenaway's film-installation), the media and the so-called avant-garde art in which the moving image bit is understood narrative conventions and the moments are almost always represented by digital image, decontextualized abstractions become, purely formal exercises and somewhat cryptic. And coming from these areas can be imagined that his foray into movies would be a large format translation, expensive and extended so that it has garnered a reputation in the ways of the biennials, art shows and art festivals. To put the logic of Greenaway: McQueen is someone who by training and background could understand those concerns. But NO. McQueen, fortunately, is not flagged "enfant terrible" of self-conscious esthete Greenaway provocative, but not give up the look of the aesthetic (in this case as well, to dry) which Greenaway bet.
Indeed, McQueen does not give the look of the "artist", but also underestimates the narrative nature of the medium and its power and emotional impact. Hunger therefore not a sham and in that sense is not an arrogant exercise Mannerist rehearsing with the frame stiff and cold plastically evocative compositions. It is urgent to put an extraordinary work of comprehensive and complex, organic if it fits the definition, assumed that while a trial is serves in a sensitive and warm the fund , events and characters give absolute substance. There's history (some structure but not quite conventional narrative governed by the logic of causality) and History (the recreation of some events more or less recent past in the troubled relations between Ireland and England). There are contemplative distance against certain situations but also room for introspective mechanisms of the characters (notably Bobby Sands, IRA activist, which focus the film ends, formidably played by Michael Fassbender). And although every once in a while we left off listening the stern voice of the infamous Margaret Thatcher to specify its context, there are resources McQueen (or the lack of certain resources) the possibility of giving the (s) history (s) a timeless and universal dimension.
There so many things I want to talk about hunger . The organic conception and poetic spaces, complete with feces or urine, including the outstanding balance is achieved, at times, including a formal stasis and flow of blowing up the routine dialogues shot / reverse (the scene stars between Bobby Sands and the priest should blush with shame Tarantino) or very Freudian (Lucien, not Sigmund) approaches to the agony and damage to the body. But also There are so many things I have to do and do not want englosinarme until I leave here.
Greenaway, apparently, has created monsters.
Another McQueen film aesthetics that seems close to everything and distances: Derek Jarman. But this is already a pending matter.
(Joseph Abril)
