WILD APPLAUSE Drama. Directed by Steve McQueen. Starring Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham. (Not rated. 96 min. At Lumiere in S.F. and Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley).

Like Julian Schnabel, who made the incredible "The Diving Bell and Butterfly" in 2007, Steve McQueen is a well-known visual artist turned feature film director who makes you wish more moviemakers went to art school.

His latest, "Hunger" is a (literally) gut-wrenching account of the 1981 Irish Republican Army hunger strike in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland, led by a young man named Bobby Sands (played in the film by Michael Fassbender). But the film avoids hagiography completely. It is artful, beautiful in parts and unbelievably brutal in others, and no less honest for its stagecraft.

For the first half of the film, the hunger strike is not even invoked. The movie opens from a curious angle: that of a prison guard (played by Stuart Graham), who lives a regular life with a wife, laughs with co-workers and winces at the bloody knuckles he gets from his job. The point of view then shifts to a new ward in the prison, Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan). Audiences, be warned (even with an advisory at the bottom of review): this movie is about the corporal state of human bodies as much as it's about anything, and it's not pretty. From the attention paid to the sounds of people breathing, to the piles of rotting food in a prison cell, to beatings that accompany haircuts, "Hunger" shows how thoroughly the prison state tries to tear apart human dignity.

When Sands, the lion of the group of young IRA prisoners (sorry, terrorists), decides that the washing strike (hence the forced haircuts and showers) and the uniform strike (no prison outfits meant the inmates were naked with blankets in their rank cells) were not enough, he lays out his case in an amazing scene with a sharp priest, Father Moran (Liam Cunningham): He is ready to die for his cause.

The final third is devoted to showing his march toward death. It's horrific. But "Hunger" displays uncommon intelligence and visual panache, transcending the goal of making the situation seem real. It feels more than real. It's art.

-- Advisory: Foul language, violence, bloodshed and death permeate this film.