Rating:  

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Lucy Walters, Robert Montano, Nicole Beharie, Hannah Ware, Elizabeth Masucci, Amy Hargreaves, Chazz Menendez, Calamity Chang, DeeDee Luxe
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Director: Steve McQueen
Rating: NC-17
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Release Date: December 2, 2011
Home Video Release Date: TBD
Box Office: $350 Thousand
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Film 4, See-Saw Films, UK Film Council, Momentum Pictures, Lipsync Productions, HanWay Films, and Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Written by: Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan.

The film eliciting some of the largest whispers and murmurs is also one of the year’s most interesting and provocative. Steve McQueen’s Shame is a film tackling the notion of addiction – sexual addiction, told through the scope of Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a successful New York marketing executive who lives a single, commitment-free existence. On the outside, Brandon seems to have done quite well for himself and presents as stable and with it; a man exuding an easy and engaging confidence. Soon, we will learn a very different story.

Immediately impactful are the first moments of the film wherein Brandon lays in bed staring at the ceiling. He looks tired, exhausted, defeated, and a thousand other emotions are present in his stare. If you had no idea what Shamewas about prior to watching it, that empty look defines the title perfectly. As he wanders naked around his apartment each morning, he keeps picking up voice mails from a woman; voice mails which are escalating in intensity and drama. “Brandon…I’m dying…I have cancer…pick up the phone” she implores. Brandon lets the message play out and goes about his day.

On one particular afternoon, Brandon’s work computer has been taken due to some strange activity detected by the company’s network technicians and Brandon tries to keep up his appearances. The calls continue. Brandon and his friend and co-worker, David (James Badge-Dale) hit the bars and look to score. Naturally, Brandon has a lot more success than David does when one woman David covets and tries to take home circles back around and finds Brandon for an outdoor tryst near a bridge. Such is Brandon’s life. If he is not seducing a woman, he is constantly watching pornography on his computer, pleasuring himself multiple times per day, and insatiably looking for the next opportunity to score. This is his life.

The woman calling Brandon ultimately is his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), and Brandon forgets that she has a key, allowing her to move herself into his apartment. A fledgling bar singer, Sissy has nowhere else to go and assumes Brandon will take her in. This tips Brandon’s apple cart tremendously and although he does not see himself self-destructing, he is ill equipped to handle Sissy’s issues and personal struggles. Sharing his apartment with his sister becomes his new life.

Shame escalates in intensity and Michael Fassbender carries every scene, save one show-stopping performance of the classic standard “New York, New York” by Mulligan. Carefully shifting from corporate man to playful best friend to entrancing, irresistible lothario to a downright sexual being; the ease in which Fassbender shifts from one persona to the next is as alarming as it is mesmerizing. This is a fearless performance, easily one of the finest and bravest of the year, and Fassbender is brilliant here.

Carey Mulligan also impresses as Sissy. Previously an Oscar nominee for her breakout performance in 2009′s An Education, Sissy is spiraling out of control herself and needs Brandon to rescue her. Their sibling connection is peculiar, hinting at long-simmering tensions, which when brought into Brandon’s clean and impeccable sanctuary of an apartment, result in constant uneasiness, sometimes to unsettling consequences.

Much of what transpires in Shame is as uncomfortable as it is compelling. Acclaimed director Steve McQueen, who directed Fassbender in 2008′s Hunger, is confident and unflinching in telling this tale in his own inimitable way. Clearly, McQueen trusts his actors to take his screenplay, co-written with Abi Morgan, and explore the pauses between the words and the emotions amplifying the dialogue.

McQueen is a unique filmmaker. He is unpredictable and just when you get the sense that you know where he is going and what rhythm he is orchestrating for you, he switches things up impressively. Long tracking shots punctuate key moments in the film – a stress-relieving run through the City, an elegy of sorts with Mulligan’s heartbreaking performance previously mentioned. At other times, Joe Walker’s kinetic and feverish edits stagger while McQueen’s shifts to a different pace effortlessly, and lingers, or doesn’t, when you expect him to. The entire approach makes for an all encompassing film experience, with one significant flaw I simply cannot get past, despite my admiration of the film.

As Brandon, Michael Fassbender bares all frequently and seldom, if ever, allows his emotions to be as freely exposed as his body. For awhile, this makes sense.

Eventually, McQueen and Abi Morgan attempt to give their subject emotional depth and despair and when the film goes there in key and pivotal moments, I was oddly less affected than I thought I would be. Brandon is in trouble, he is anguished and in despair and while I found myself feeling bad for a man so hopelessly mired in an addiction that can only pay off with fleeting moments of satisfaction, I never was able to connect with Brandon’s shame.

And of course I am supposed to. Unlike films which can present addiction in a tangible and relatible way; either sexual addiction is a limiting topic by its very own design or McQueen and Morgan and Fassbender keep us at a distance for so long that the emotional connectivity to Brandon’s plight becomes non-existent. While the film has a brilliant opening and ending, and is compelling from start to finish, I could not find much sorrow or pity for Brandon by the end.

And therein lies the aggravating and gnawing blemish on a film I admire greatly. There is no shame in telling an unflinching story about sexual addiction in an adult way and so much of Steve McQueen’s film is bold and stunning. With an exceptional performance by Michael Fassbender and a well acted supporting turn from Carey Mulligan, I find a lot to think about and consider with Shame. I just wish I had more than a surface-level understanding of the addiction that Brandon and others battling sexual addiction experience. Connect on that level and you would have one of the finest films of any year, as opposed to settling for a pretty great film in 2011.

Should I See It?

Restores the notion that an adult-themed dramatic film, saddled with an NC-17, can still be legitimate and affecting filmmaking.

Michael Fassbender is extraordinary and he and Carey Mulligan have impressive scenes with one another. A brave, unflinching, and uncompromising film, Shame is not for everyone but there is some fabulous acting on display here.

The subject matter is tough and difficult but the film is laid out and structured so well that it is easy to get drawn in to the story with Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan’s screenplay.

To address the elephant in the room, the film’s sexual content is entirely simulated and the stigma that NC-17 is just a modernized X rating, as a means of showing pornography is a strong misnomer here.

By its very design, Shame will not interest a great many people, partly because of the NC-17 rating, and also because the topic of sexual addiction is not a warm and inviting subject to rush to the theater to go see.

There are people who laugh at the mere idea of sexual addiction and having a dramatic film built around the topic is going to strike some people as exploitative and salacious.

Films dealing with depression and addiction are not generally huge draws, so if you are not prepared to revisit those sensibilities, therein lies another reason to stay away.