Shame

dir. Steve McQueen (2011) UK/USA

Just as Bobby Sands drew his last breath in Steve McQueen’s exquisite cinematic debut, Hunger, so each sharp intake in the British writer/director’s handsomely produced follow-up accentuates life’s brittleness. Synoptically, Shame is a film that attempts to penetrate the psyche of a thirty-something satyromaniac named Brandon (Michael Fassbender) – a man whose every waking moment comprises a whirlwind of shallow intercourse and crushing indignity.

Whether making his daily commute or mechanically servicing himself in his anaesthetised apartment, Brandon is a man for whom ritual reigns supreme. At work, he’s tempered his addiction so that masturbatory trips to the men’s room are conducted with the utmost discretion. Hishome,too, is cold and functional. Its pallid neutrality echoing hisown numb mood as he lies alone in bed, ashen-skinned, looking in a state of early rigor mortis.

Only through music do we catch a glimpseof Brandon’s torturedsoul. A small precession of LPs dress an otherwise stark living room unit from which Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ pour, cocooning Brandon in a protective film of precious tranquillity. Thesesame abstract notes also accompany one of the film’s most elegantly crafted sequences – a tremendously sustained tracking shot of Brandon jogging that is both audacious and hypnotic in its execution. By allowing Brandon a connection with the material in a tangible way, McQueen is thereby able to emphasise his remoteness from those closest to him – specifically, his vulnerable, warm-hearted sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan).

Initiallydepicted as a nuisance, a threat to her brother’s carefully regimented ritualism, Sissy’ssignificance doesn’t fully manifest until an excruciatingly cute scene in which she performs an extraordinary rendition of ‘New York, New York’. Stripping the track of barroom bravura, she slows the song down to an absolute breaking point, transforming it into a plaintive ballad of American transcendence. McQueen, keeping the frame locked tight on Mulligan’s face, cuts away only briefly to show Brandon shed a single tear. Whatever shared trauma this moment has evoked is unclear, but what is apparent is that the agonies Brandon and Sissy are experiencing today have mutated directly from the scars of their childhood.

In Brandon, McQueen and co-writer Abi Morgan have fastidiously woven all the common hallmarks of sex addiction – fetishism, compulsive behaviour, despair and discontentment. Yet,he is always perceived as a fully functioning member of society, rather than just a hypersexual deviant in a constant state of libidinal frenzy.Furthermore, for all his much-ballyhooed full-frontal nudity, Fassbender – as he did with Bobby Sands – endows Brandon with an ambiguity that borders on inscrutability. His deep-seated emotional detachment is likely to lead some viewers to dismiss the film as frigid and remote, yet it is these pained moments of isolated contemplation in which Fassbender is at his most forceful.

As a filmmaker, McQueen is at his best when staging wrestling bouts – be they psychological, intellectual or erotic. Indeed, some of Shame’s most memorable scenes are those in which Brandon grapples with those around him: on a surprisingly mellow date with an attractive co-worker; in his borderline incestuous battles with Sissy; and in two thrillingly extended flirtations with the same purple-hatted subway passenger that bookend the film. Conversely, the more jarring aspects of the picture include a script peppered with unnecessarily blunt lines (“Actions speak louder than words”); sound design that makes heavy-handed use of ticking clocks as a means of conveying tension; and a third act that not only veers into Gasper Noé territory, but also gestures, rather limply, at a backstory.

In its most explicit moments, McQueen’s film is inescapably divisive, yet no real attempt is ever made to educate its audience or to strip away the enigma surrounding this anomic affliction. Instead, Shame is presented as a snapshot of one man’s addiction – we meet Brandon somewhere in the middle of his journey and leave him without any clear sense of its end. For his depiction of a misunderstood and marginalised disease that isindicative of modern life,beyond thecookie-cutter clichés of belligerent misogyny and lurid perverseness, McQueen should be commended. Likewise for his abstinence from aggressive social pamphleteering. However, without any firm hope in Brandon’s future, the audience cannot help but grow indifferent to his plight. As a result, the impact of an otherwise raw, elegant and uncompromising film isinvariably dulled. Don’t take your eyes off McQueen and Fassbender, though. Not for one second.