Shame

Director: Steve McQueen
Writer: Steve McQueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan
Release Date: December 2, 2011
Length: 1 hour 41 minutes

    The writer and director of the critically acclaimed independent film Hunger, which revolved around the Irish hunger strike of 1981, Steve McQueen strikes astonishing and controversial filmmaking once again with the highly anticipated Shame. The film stars the 2011 male equivalent to Jessica Chastain, breakout star Michael Fassbender (Jane Eyre, X-Men First Class) as Brandon Sullivan, a highly successful and sex addicted thirty something living in New York City. 

    The film opens with a long shot of Brandon’s grief ridden and painful expression assumedly after masturbating in bed. When he makes the harsh sound of opening the blinds, a severe light comes across the shot of the bed, he has just gotten out of, setting the tone of McQueen’s excruciatingly long and real shooting. Watching Brandon’s “routine” so to speak, hiring a pricey call girl while ignoring a series of pleading voicemails from his sister, we see the very prosperous Brandon has no emotional connection to anything or anyone. 

    One day, Brandon returns to his posh apartment, to find his immature but troubled sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) in his shower, with all her things sprawled out over the rest of his apartment. After she persistently begs, Brandon agrees to let her stay with him for a few days, giving into her charmingly childish manner. As the film continues, with a magnifying glass we analyze McQueen’s heavily layered protagonist through his different relationships with few people in his life. Whenever Brandon is not experiencing the ecstasy of having sex or nearing it, he is a pit of wordless Shame and failure, which we see in his dysfunctional relationship with his sensitively needy opposite sister. To Brandon, sex is free of any emotion, a way to escape from his life, while to her, sex is a way to get emotionally closer to another person, and expresses her depression through an addiction to self harm rather than sex. Sissy’s emotional need to be close to Brandon and his more than cruel anger toward her make for a beyond distraught and almost creepy relationship. You are brought to a level of sadness because of the purely unfair aggression Brandon has against Sissy, and because of the realized familial love and care he has for her that comes to light later on.  

    When Brandon goes out on a traditional dinner date with a pretty co-worker, we are surprised at how awkward and cute he is in contrast to his suaveness and sexiness when he is strictly trying to lure women into bed. This part of Brandon helps make him a real character for the audience to somehow connect to, as opposed to an exaggerated manic sex addict, with no sanity whatsoever. Through all of his well thought out and commendably layered written work, McQueen wins us over with originality and intense realism. However, it is through his deep creation of the fascinating Brandon we are so utterly captivated. You just can’t guess that you’re going to walk out of the theatre sympathizing and almost empathizing for a violent and sex crazed character. 

    From the most incredible work of Irish actor Michael Fassbender, you get that bowled over connection. As the second biggest Oscar snub of the year, right behind Michael Shannon of Take Shelter, Fassbender, without almost any dialogue, instantly pulls you into the distressed mind of Brandon, something you might have been weary about before the film began. Carey Mulligan gives a performance that rises far above her beyond splendid work in her breakout film, An Education, showing how far the twenty six year old actress has grown in only two years. Her incomparable portrayal of the unbearably sensitive Sissy simply drains us of emotion, with a brilliant hauntingly slow and different spin on the usually upbeat “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra. 

    This film brings Mr.Fassbender and Ms. Mulligan to the height of some of the most extraordinary acting today, but not without the innovative mind of arguably the most challenging filmmaker today. McQueen’s exceedingly unique style of filmmaking turns Shame itself into a unique movie experience. Through his incredibly long, harsh and head on frames, he makes us understand that life does speed from getting onto a train, leaving it, walking to work, being inside the building. When there is any tension or important emotion that is trying to be conveyed on screen by the characters, McQueen makes you experience every anguished, awkward or painful second the characters have to go through. When Brandon is in an elevator anxious (as the audience is as well) to get upstairs, all I could think was “why can’t McQueen just cut to him walking into his apartment already?”.  

    It’s that painful realism though, that makes Shame the most authentic film of the year, and with its achievements in filmmaking and acting, Shame is by far one of the best films of the year. Though of course there are often almost unwatchable explicit scenes of sex, I can assure you it is not there for shock value or for pure vulgarity. With work from a visionary, performed by two masters of their craft, Shame will pull you through an emotional roller coaster, leaving you exhausted but extremely affected by this independent tour de force.