Review: Shame
(Originaly reviewed in 2012)
Wow
Two films into 2012 and I may have just found my favourite of the year. Shame is fantastic, the performances and direction are some of the best I’ve seen in recent years. It is easily one of Michael Fassbender’s best roles, certainly his bravest with frequent sex scene and full frontal nudity.
As Brandon, Fassbender plays a character that starts off cold and emotionless, he keeps his world isolated from other people going from sexual encounter to sexual encounter without a care or emotion to sully the experience. During the beginning sequence you see a montage of his uncaring nature to his prey intercut with his predatory following of a woman on the train, what starts off as harmless flirting turns sour when the woman notices Brandon’s eye don’t leave her. However this emotional shell starts cracking when his sister Sissy arrives and becomes a weight on his life, the cracking starts small with a single tear during Sissy’s slow rendition of New York and grows towards a tantrum when he hears Sissy and his boss having sex in his room to holding her down while screaming at her and ending with him finally breaking down on the docks, alone. The pinnacle comes when he confronts Sissy about her continually going after his married boss, the things he chastises her for you know he’s done himself, it seems he’s talking more to himself than her.
The loss of his emotional armour is almost too much for Brandon to handle at points, when it looks like he’s about to enter a real relationship with a co-worker he can’t perform because there are feelings involved between the two of them. As he degrades himself further and further you can easily see the change, in an early scene Brandon is able to seduce a woman with only a few words but by the end of it he’s become that sexual creep in the bar as he fingers a girl and tells her he wants to eat her out despite her having a boyfriend in the same bar. When Brandon lifts his fingers to the boyfriend’s nose and tells him to smell he gets a beating that’s well deserved and overdue.
In the role of Sissy Carey Mulligan is a world away from Drive’s angel next door Irene, she’s foul-mouthed, she’s possibly bi-polar and when she’s first on screen she’s completely naked and doesn’t bother hiding it from her brother. Sissy is the complete opposite of Brandon, where he’s an emotionless robot she’s too emotional, she’s wears her heart on her sleeve and can go from happy to sad to angry within seconds of each other. It’s a great role for Mulligan and like Fassbender it’s her bravest to date.
I haven’t seen Hunger so I didn’t know what to expect from Steve McQueen’s direction, needless to say it’s brilliant. McQueen doesn’t use a lot of cuts in the film, instead opting for several long, lingering shots allowing the audience to focus on the characters. His tracking shot of Brandon running through New York is well made and probably one of the best tracking shots in many years and in the sequence of Brandon’s degradation using the red light of the gay club to show Brandon’s descent into Hell. Not only does McQueen excel with the camera he’s amazing with the score, there are moments where there is no music and just the sounds of the scene are heard – case in point Brandon’s attempts to copulate with a co-worker – and there are others where there are no sounds in the room and only the score is heard, a great moment comes near the end when Brandon runs home after his train is stopped, I won’t say what he finds at home to avoid spoilers but the scene is great.
Overall, Shame is one of the best films I’ve seen in years and even so early in the year it’s easily going to be near to top of my end of year list.
10/10