Review of Shame (2011) by Robyn N — 04 Nov 2014

Teaming up once again after their stunning work on the 2008 Bobby Sands drama, "Hunger," director Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender share a special chemistry best detailed in bracing films containing little to no dialogue. "Shame" examines the nature of need with how we live our lives and the experiences that shape us. "Shame" powerfully communicates to the audience and leaves us to internalize our own thoughts, asking us to paint our own cinematic details in the gaps.

The film's opening shot shows Brandon awake in the morning, staring immobile into space. He never reveals emotion. He lives like a man compelled to follow an inevitable course, and his life is a living hell. He is cold to everyone he encounters. On the subway, he trades eye contact with a woman his is flirting with. He boldly maintains eye contact, but doesn't smile. His is a dreadful life. His shame masked in privacy.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a good-looking, young man in his early 30's, who lives alone in a sterile condo in Manhattan. He works in a cubicle with a computer. Never mind what his company does. It makes no difference to him. Sometimes in the evening, he and his boss, David (James Badge Dale), go out to drink in singles bars. David is an outgoing and throwing out pick-up lines. Brandon just sits there, his face impassive, knowing he doesn't have to. He shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex.

The introduction of Sissy (Carey Mulligan), Brandon's sister, injects spontaneity and life into this almost emotionally desolate film. She is as passionate and uninhibited as he is the complete opposite. This encounter resurfaces memories of their shared painful past, and Brandon's insular life and addiction begin to spiral out of control. She needs him desperately and that frightens him most. She works sometimes as a cabaret singer, and in one scene, she performs a fantastic rendition of "New York, New York" in close-up. This close-up also shows pain and grief of both, a truly beautiful moment captured.

McQueen's camera gives us a mix of the highly stylized and the stark, with frequent long takes giving the actors the narrative space to embellish scenes with depth. Fassbender for one, is often captured looking to the ground, almost failing to register the world before him. McQueen gives the audience an opportunity to absorb Brandon's mental process, understanding how the man struggles with his impulses. It's an opening into a foreign world of obsession and shame; an orgasmic thrill-of-the-hunt existence. The movie can get overwhelming and burdensome for some as the movie, as well as Brandon's addiction, progresses with terrifying consequences. However, Fassbender's powerful, gut-wrenching performance and Steve McQueen's direction behind the camera is what makes this film so extraordinary.