No super-long write-up this time, all 3 films are great, though my personal order is Shame > 12 Years A Slave > Hunger.

[800 words -- 3-5 minutes.]

Hunger is about the 1981 Irish hunger strike against the British, but is great not for the stance it takes on the issue (which would just be pandering) but for how it is presented. It's a mostly silent film with several excellent moments, a few I'll list here:

1. Despite their cell being objectively disgusting, caked in feces & rotting food & maggots, one man is afraid to masturbate and continually checks to see if his cellmate is asleep. Very human.

2. Margaret Thatcher is not seen once: instead her voice hangs over the prison like a Charles Dickens' villain and chides how these Irish terrorists are attempting to incite in the public the most base of human emotion: pity!

3. The last 3rd of the film is not only some excellent imagery (some say 2001-esque), but is legitimately the most frightened I've ever been by a film -- death by starvation is really fucking brutal, and McQueen wisely chooses to portray it partially through memory & metaphor.

12 Years A Slave is McQueen's take on Moby-Dick if the Pequod were a slave ship, where the film is partially about slavery but also about power & how humans wield it. My (very shortened) case for that is such:

1. The scene with the house slaves where they have attained some measure of power/safety, yet look down upon the plantation slaves, despite that they could become them again at any moment.

2. Solomon's first owner, Master Ford, is a typical guilty white liberal, too cowardly to truly help Solomon yet "at least" treats his slaves nicely, and incites this great dialogue:

SOLOMON: Master Ford is a decent man.

ELIZA: He is a slaver.

SOLOMON: Under the circumstances--

ELIZA: Under the circumstances he is a slaver! Christian only in his proclamations. Separated me from my precious babies for lack of a few dollars. But you truckle at his boot. You luxuriate in his favor.

SOLOMON: I survive! I will not fall into despair. Woeful and crushed; melancholy is the yolk I see most. I will offer up my talents to Master Ford. I will keep myself hearty until freedom is opportune.

ELIZA: Ford is your opportunity. Do you think he does not know that you are more than you suggest? But he does nothing for you. Nothing. You are no better than prized livestock. Call for him. Call, tell him of your previous circumstances and see what it earns you...Solomon. Have you settled into your role as Platt, then?

SOLOMON: My back is thick with scars from protesting my freedom. Do not accuse me--

ELIZA: I accuse you of nothing. I cannot accuse. I too have done so many, many dishonorable things to survive. And for all of them I have ended up here... No better than if I had stood up for myself.

3. Solomon's second master, Master Epps', has a mutually-abusive relationship with his wife which not only involves each other directly, but their own slaves as cudgels to wield against each other:

MISTRESS EPPS: You will remove that black bitch from this property, or I'll take myself back to Cheneyville.

MASTER EPPS: Back to the hogs' trough where I found you? Do not set yourself against Patsy, my dear. Because I will rid myself of you well before I do away with her.

Shame is the last one I watched, and possibly McQueen's greatest. It follows the businessman Brandon (played by Michael Fassbender -- him & McQueen have a funny bromance, he appears in all 3 films) who suffers from sexual addiction. It's a very dirty film: don't watch with your parents.

But, I am set in the unenviable position of disagreeing with McQueen on his own work here in that the film is not about sexual addiction, but about loneliness, of which sex/porn addiction is a symptom and not a cause. Nor does "Shame" refer to shame over his addiction. It instead refers to the main character's inability to form meaningful relationships. Among businessmen, hiring sex workers would not be a shameful thing, given 1. Brandon is quite an attractive ladies' man and 2. outwardly rather successful, which only further layers his internal issues that McQueen in typical fashion does through excellent use of silence & implications & glances.

The 2 scenes I remember most, for now, are 1. how uncomfortably close him & his sister are with each other, hinting at past sexual abuse, and 2. the great scene where he is fucking a potential girlfriend, yet fails to perform as soon as actual romance/intimacy begins, followed by a scene of him aggressively fucking a sex worker with no issues.

And I'll even forgive McQueen for Small Axe, whose first episode sadly does not seem to approach these films. Ah well.