Shame (2011)
Shame (BRIT) Directed by Steve McQueen Written by Steve McQueen; Abi Morgan Starring Michael Fassbender; Carey Mulligan; James Badge Dale; Nicole Beharie; Lucy Walters; Hannah Ware
Following his critically acclaimed debut Hunger (2008), forty three year old British director Steve McQueen brings us Shame, the story of an emotionally disconnected thirty-something New Yorker (one wonders why not London?), Brandon Sullivan, who seeks escape through an all encompassing sexual addiction.
Working from a spare script he co-wrote with Abi Morgan, McQueen’s visual style is in evidence in his long takes and use of focus, but his Manhattan is a far less stylized palette than The Maze prison of his first outing. Dominated by a series of single shots, Brandon’s world (a projection of his interior life) is largely empty and quiet, devoid of some of the hustle and bustle and noise we normally associate with the city. He travels alone from one modern hi rise to another, his underwater existence claustrophobic and small. Seeking out his pleasures by trolling the internet for porn and hookers, his eyes are perpetually trained in search of the next human conquest (and/or visual masturbatory memory material) as he rides the train, walks the streets, or drinks alongside his mostly nameless work-mates.
There are few specific details provided about Brandon or his sister Sissy’s (Carey Mulligan) background, though we learn that they were originally from Ireland and there is an indication that their shared past wasn’t a good one. There is also a strange sexual element to their relationship that at least leaves open the question of what might have gone on between the two of them, but like so much of the film the answers are not explicitly provided. We are unsure exactly what Brandon does for a living, only that he appears to make a nice living, works a job with responsibility in a modern looking professional office, and resides in a nicely adorned, orderly apartment.
The relationship between Brandon and Sissy is central to the story because she is seemingly the one person in his life who holds any weight, with whom he has some personal stake. Though he ignores her calls in the beginning of the film, Sissy eventually moves in with him temporarily, almost immediately disrupting his carefully constructed, no attachment existence. A bleached-blonde former cutter and currently depressed lounge singer, Sissy is a mess, and is reaching out to her brother in a potentially last resort attempt at contact.
The film has gotten a lot of publicity over the NC-17 rating and Fassbender’s display of frontal nudity, though the actual sex depicted is not overly graphic - rather, it is rolled out with the kind of matter-of-factness normally reserved in the U.S. for extreme violence. It is that very mundane nature, perhaps, the fact that McQueen refuses to turn his gaze away from the nihilism at neatly timed intervals that might be disquieting to some American audiences. We are voyueristically gazing at one man’s carnality, an ongoing descent of personal debasement driven by a need for connection without emotion.
Shame is not always an easy watch. Nor should it be. The vacuousness of Brandon’s life is a modern day affliction. All around him, in fact, are people searching for relief from whatever ails them, the loneliness and desperation so palpable it fairly bubbles to the service. His married boss Dave (James Badge Dale) speaking to his son by Skype (technology that dually brings us together and maintains distance), but ineptly trying to pick up random women in dimly lit downtown bars; newly separated co-worker Marianne (Nicole Beharie) searching for love; a married female stranger on a train (Lucy Walters) exchanging lustful looks.
As the disaffected and clearly seriously troubled Brandon, Fassbender gives an excellent, restrained performance, refusing to betray the secrets McQueen clearly wants to hold onto, though a a major sequence toward the end seems an affront to the largely plotless asceticism achieved so skillfully throughout the rest of the film.