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Shame (2011)

In the emotionally draining psychodrama Shame, a brave Michael Fassbender creeps into the tortured skin of a sex addict. What follows is a painful to watch downward spiral into the personal hell of a man who has become a slave to his carnal desires.

Heavy stuff and not immediately advisable as cozy movie night with the family, your friends or your significant other (I dare you!), But damn clever cinema that crawls deeply under your skin and into your mind.

Steve McQueen caused a stir with his controversial debut Hunger (2008), for which he won a Caméra d'Or at Cannes. McQueen is known for his minimalism and attention to detail, which is also easy to see in this one. Along with Abi Morgan he wrote Shame, and it again delivered us a poignant and dark psychological character study.

The film may be somewhat explicit for some, but McQueen really wanted to show you what there is to see without censoring: It’s sex, it’s what most of us have done or will do at some point. I for instance have never had a loaded gun or even a bullet in my hands.

It seems strange that everyday things are censored and things that we are not capable of, or know less about, are continuously shown to the public. With this daring approach, and a sublime Michael Fassbender he again broadened the film horizon.

Here’s a brief summary: Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a New York yuppie who suffers from sex addiction. Behind his cool, attractive, sexy facade lurks a predator that’s masterful at the art of seduction but that can barely control his lust, no he’s not Patrick Bateman…

Quickies in gloomy, dirty alleys? Check. A work computer packed with hardcore and extreme pornography? Check. Fixed webcam dates? Check. Urgent masturbation sessions during and outside working hours? Double check. When his equally troubled sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) pops up, Brandon’s double life is more than ever under pressure and under threat of being exposed.

Brandon is at the surface a typical, attractive man in his thirties, with a well-paid job, a beautiful, minimalist apartment in New York, and he’s successful with women, what more could you ask for right? He seems at first glance like the man every man wants to be like and every woman wants to be with.

However, once he’s secluded from people, he transforms and is completely dependent on an obsessive need for sex. Everything that can satisfy his sexual appetite he engages in. And why not? The chilly environment he lives in seems made to escape from relations and friends.

When Brandon is among people, he is alone. The sex has become a routine, leaving him with a lack of self-reflection and self respect, he’d do anything to escape his own mind and body and not have to face them and himself.

Which creates a vicious circle, he’s disgusted at himself for what he does, whenever someone says I think you’re disgusting he can’t help but think It’s about him…

But he can’t bear confronting himself so he indulges in what disgusted him about himself in the first place, to escape from any judgement that he could bring on himself.

So he constantly enables himself in his addiction, that’s essentially the definition of being addicted to anything, It’s a vicious circle, whether it be substances or in this case sex, and Fassbender captures It beautifully you can see the shame anguish, pain and self loathing.

His sister Sissy, is at first glance, an eccentrically dressed and extroverted woman. She unexpectedly and chaotically moves in with Brandon, she disrupts his routine, which forces him to face and think about what he’s doing.

The two are apparently opposites but share grief and emptiness. Brandon’s an introvert who is about to implode. Sissy’s a sensitive, emotional extrovert (she’s a woman who apparently has a habit of very quickly and deeply falling in love, and has a very deep need of love and attention) that can explode at any moment.

The successful yup can only think about one thing. His whole life in New York seems to revolve around sex. It has nothing to do with pleasure, it has become something compulsory.

He has prostitutes come over and picks up random women in clubs, but if there is love or any type of feeling, of emotion involved, he closes down and it doesn’t work anymore (in this case you can interpret it both literally and figuratively).

He manages to keep up his obsessive lifestyle while pretending to be a normally functioning member of society, but when his sister is with him it begins to become more and more difficult.

Frustrations build further as she sticks around longer. Brandon has less privacy than he would like and so he sees the control over his addiction slip through his fingers. But gradually it becomes clear that his isolated life also camouflaged other problems, which sooner or later must come to light. Now that brother and sister are back together, they’re both reminded of their past.

Brandon’s married boss likes to go out along with him to indulge his sexual frustrations on every woman who comes along. He succeeds with only one woman: Brandon’s sister Sissy, she is a wandering singer and moved in with her brother, allegedly because she has nowhere else and no one else to go to. Brandon for the first time feels confronted, and driven into a corner, he feels as if he’s dirty little secret is about to be discovered any minute.

Sissy immediately begins an affair with Brandon’s boss, after which Brandon’s obsession with sex and pornography comes to light. It is significant that no one is really that surprised of the fact that Brandon’s computer is full of pornographic images and videos.

Or of the fact that Brandon is not able to have a real relationship with a woman. It is as if all the characters in this film share the same psychology and culture: Emotionally numb and closed off living in a world without real content or meaning, heaven forbid you’d feel anything, emotions are brushed off and laughed at, they’re something to be ashamed of, you must appear strong and hide everything in that horrible, cruel world.

Brandon is constantly looking for incentives, for something that gives him a kick, for something that makes him feel alive. He drinks Red Bull, he jogs like a madman through a deserted city. But it as only In a bar high in a skyscraper when his sister sings a classic song that he feels something, It’s: Sinatra’s New York, New York (which haunted my head after the film) his sister sing it slowly, and in Brandon’s eyes even somewhat sensually, you pick up on some sort of tension.

She sings the song as if it were a dream, and he seems to feel emotion for the first time in a long and even cries. I almost cried with this scene, which I at the end of the film ultimately did literally for like ten minutes without exaggerating, well at least I now know that I’m not not emotionally blocked… Shame’s truly an attack on the emotions.

Brandon at one point has a date that he’d like to be something other than a one night stand. He really likes this woman and he wants meaningful physical and psychological contact with her, for the first time in a long while or maybe ever, he doesn’t just want a meaningless fuck, he wants to make love, doesn’t just want to get himself off, but wants to assure the other person pleasure too only he can’t perform…

It’s as if looking her straight in the face and have her stare right back at him, and seeing her as more than a mere object is too painful and confronting. He appears to be a man who has forgotten how to love a person.

Or maybe he simply is not capable of it and maybe never was capable of it because of his own past, maybe he never was shown love and thus never knew what it is, but he wants it, and maybe even needs it. After the failed date with the one woman he really actually liked, maybe could have fallen in love with, he gets worse than ever.

The dividing line between Brandon and Patrick Bateman (the psychopathic character of novelist Bret Easton Ellis) appears quite thin, he seems on the surface just as perfect and beautiful and obsessed with fitness and vanity.

He does not kill women, but has just as little respect for them as people, women are something he prays on. He has frantic, very rough, probably even painful sex that doesn’t look pleasing and enjoyable at all. His face during orgasm tells the whole story; there is nothing but pain and emptiness in his life. It’s tainted love…

The shame in this film does not reflect the kind of guilt and self loathing that sometimes sticks to sex. Rather, it is a kind of embarrassment associated with an inability to psychologically and even physically make a connection with another human being, in this case, a woman. Brandon feels powerless. He realizes that he is probably not alone. He realises this while sitting in a crowded subway in the city of millions, that is New York.

No feelings and emotions of the main character will ever be fully defined, because he does not seem to want them to be there at all. The uneasy meaninglessness of a life without love imposes itself to the viewer, and it won’t release you from It’s painful grip.

A life in Brandon’s cold New York, a city where everything is possible but where no one feels responsible for you, lies treacherously close if you’re not careful. There’s a reason why people say things such as you’re never lonelier than when you’re alone in the city, surrounded by people. They’re people who don’t know you, some might want to get to know you but a lot of them probably don’t care about you, since they don’t personally know you.

Sissy his sister unlike him does know how to express herself, sometimes a little too clearly, she’s a little too honest and direct sometimes and it gives her problems in her relationships with men, as she seems needy and dependent, which she is but probably just because of her past, what she needs is someone will listen and take care of her. She seeks contact with her brother but gets no answer, he ignores her completely and she feels driven to extremes.

Shame manages to cling to you and makes you think and ponder over the ever complicated relationship that people have with sex. And especially the enormous distance that can exist between people. In a living and breathing city where people actually can’t avoid each other, even sex can’t fill up any emptiness, distance and loneliness.

The only thing we really do find out about them is that they have emigrated from Ireland to the United States. Perhaps to make a new start in the Big Apple. It shimmers through in any case in the text of Sinatras New York, New York, which Sissy sings sensitively in an elongated, atmospheric scene. Shame is also about more than sex addiction, It’s about the human psyche in big cities, brothers and sisters, human relationships.

But real solutions or answers are omitted. Director Steve McQueen shows no interest in explaining trauma, but shows which sort of pain and dangers can lurk under a life that seems to be happy and successful for outsiders.

It provides a strong and heartfelt drama, beautifully filmed and overwhelming because of the highly melancholic atmosphere. It is suffering that at times even seems oppressive and claustrophobic, which you can’t run from, you may want to look away but something forces you to keep watching.

In one of the strongest scenes of the film we see Brandon slide into overnight New York after an argument. Like a junkie that needs his shot, he strolls through alleys, dark bars and sex clubs to fulfill his needs. A deeply sad picture, which is further strengthened once he has found two victims. Only his tortured face is in focus. All the fun is gone. He looks tormented, exhausted, dead inside. It is a tremendous effort from Michael Fassbender.

Steve McQueen knows how to grab the viewer by the throath. Whether he was showing the hunger strike of a political prisoner or the demise of a sex addict the man controls perfectly in an unprecedented narrative and stylistic manner. In other words, shit, that guy can direct. Shame is easily the best film about addiction since Nicolas Cage went to Las Vegas to drink himself to death.

Shame is anything but a bite-sized chunk, not only because of the controversial topic (bet you will really only recognise after the film that sex addiction is a disease?), But also because McQueen absolutely shows no judgments about his subject. On the basis of slowly accumulated scenes he paints a raw portrait without giving too much away about the addiction. Let the viewer think about that themselves, you can almost hear McQueen say behind the screen.

Between the frill-free observations, you get the occasional push to crawl over the facade, but you’re not really given much explanations for anything. A choice that might not always make it easy to feel anything for the main character. Frustrating and stimulating at the same time, undoubtedly just the feeling McQueen wanted to provoke.

Brandon is not a slick player like his boss (a good John Badge Dale) but a sick man. Just check that early scene on the subway. What starts as an innocent flirtation with an attractive young woman ends in dangerous intimidation behaviour, her face quickly takes on an uncomfortable even scared look, Brandon come across as creepy as a serial killer who is looking for a new victim:

And so Shame consists of a sequence of scenes illustrating Brandon’s obsessive-compulsive behavior. Often disturbing, sometimes poignant, and always fascinating. The man chases his dick but, not because he likes it or because he think It’s cool, but because his body and the demons in his mind force him, he seems to have no choice, no free will.

It only goes from bad to worse when his sister is introduced as a catalyst for the downward spiral. Or did you think that the confrontation between an emotionally blocked man who gets off on meaningless sex and a self- destructive woman who needs love and affection would go well? He ultimately in a very disturbing and arresting scene physically lashes out on her, it becomes quite difficult to feel for him after this, even if he is a haunted and deeply troubled man:

The relationship between Brandon and Sissy provides underlying tensions and developments which truly allows Shame to become the complex and multilayered psychological drama that it is.

McQueen’s direction looms large and conspicuous (the tracking shot in which he runs off the frustration!), Something that could have been cliché and disturbing if it hadn’t perfectly matched to the content. For example, (I seem to be obsessed with this scene) the scene in which Carey Mulligan sings New York New York seems long, very long, perhaps too long.

But the reaction shots of Fassbender make the almost arty farty moment into an unexpected key emotional scene that make the hairs on your neck straight stand straight up, very strong stuff. Another emotional bomb: the forced date in which Brandon undertakes a desperate attempt to feel anything other than an instinctive urge for female flesh. And so we can go on and on enumerating the striking collection of moments that make Shame into a shocking, literally quite in your face experience.

But it’s Michael Fassbender that makes the greatest impression with a performance that dominates the film as a softly ticking time bomb. Fassbender is a very good actor, but around Steve McQueen, he transforms into a sublime method actor. Rather than showy he’s subtle with a menacing body language that says more than words (that penetrating stare!), Pun absolutely Intended;).

The way Fassbender is imaged by McQueen and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (Hunger, Hysteria) is effective in its intrusiveness. Brandon represents anonymity itself, always imprisoned in his own horrible nightmarish world, he’s caught in a boundless void in which he can’t hide his shame. A shame that is not only stunningly portrayed in the imagery, but also excellently played by one of the most sought out actors of our time.

Michael Fassbender exposes all literally and figuratively, he gives the role everything, his Brandon makes a compelling and touching character. But Carey Mulligan is just as strong and intriguing a character, in her up until now strongest and most honest film, It’s just a little sad thats she didn’t get more screen time as she truly is a very expressive and capable actress.

The combination of Harry Escott’s music and the tight static images melt together to create a hard-hitting, intriguing, very emotionally affecting whole, strengthening Brandon’s constant personal hell on screen.

With his characteristic visual style and editing he loves long, uninterrupted takes, McQueen plunges his picture in a unique, hypnotic atmosphere without ever losing the focus. New York is behind the same facade as the main character (charming on the surface, dark and dingy, even creepy when you go deeper) and to make it all a bit more intense than it already is the camera is so close to the skin of the main character that you will hear his heart thumping through the screen if you listen closely.

Despite the in America, much discussed “frontal nudity” Shame is far from erotic. It gives the film an observational and rough character. There are some very explicit sex scenes and nudity in the film, but the director never takes the sensational path.

Those looking for exciting eroticism may simply go look somewhere else, because enticing is not exactly the word that comes to mind when describing them, It’s just flesh pounding against flesh without any type of emotion, which really takes away the oportunity to create any passionate scenes, the only thing you see is someone who’s in pain, who’s in the hell that is his own mind, taking out frustration, trying to get away from himself, not sexy at all.

The way Sissy painfully slowly and dilligently sings Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York in that single, long shot, strongly contrasts with the way the city is visualised in Shame. Sleek, stylized, everywhere is glass and concrete: it is an image that comes from the idealism of the city, the perfect place to disappear in as an individual. Any sexual act that Brandon undertakes is as cold and unnoticed as the streets of Manhattan can be. In Shame we see New York in a completely different context.

Shame is not just a film about addiction; it covers issues such as anonymity, our self-awareness and the societal norm. It is a film that grabs you by the throat and mind for hours or even days it will haunt your head, it might make you uncomfortable, it might disgust you, it might make you cry, but one thing is certain It’ll stick with ya.

Sissy Sullivan: I’m trying, I’m trying to help you. Brandon Sullivan: How are you helping me, huh? How are you helping me? How are you helping me? Huh? Look at me. You come in here and you’re a weight on me. Do you understand me? You’re a burden. You’re just dragging me down. How are you helping me? You can’t even clean up after yourself. Stop playing the victim. Sissy Sullivan: I’m not playing the victim. If I left, I would never hear from you again. Don’t you think that’s sad? Don’t you think that’s sad? You’re my brother.

“I find you disgusting… I find you inconsolable… I find you invasive.”

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