So here comes the only honest review of Shame you'll ever read. Man, what I wouldn't give to have had this guy's life!
Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, someone that, at least for a minute, every male (and probably every female) has fantasized about being. He's on the way up at a good job, he's got an uncluttered Manhattan apartment, his handsome face and physique look chiseled from marble and he's got what can safely be described as a sequoia in his trunks. All he has to do is glance at a woman and she's ready to sleep with him. He probably can shoot lasers from his fingertips and levitate, too, but that part is left offscreen. What's left onscreen, however, is how this character takes these gifts and pisses them away with his neuroses.
Shame is directed by the British conceptual artist Steve McQueen (his real name) and a lot of care is taken to remind you that you are watching an arty film. The lighting is cold, the framing employs negative space, lengthy one-take dialogue sequences are shot from an unusual perspective, characters are framed by clear and opaque glass, there is evocative music on the soundtrack, heck, there's even a tracking shot across three avenue blocks that would do Tarkvosky proud. These whistles and bells are enough to keep you distracted from the fact that Shame is but a whiff of a story: a man is emotionally distant, and this makes him sad.
There are some hints to the character, mostly in the form of his histrionic sister, well played by Carey Mulligan. She's a dye-job mess, whose main problem seems to be that she (aha!) loves too much. Quite the opposite of big brother, whose cringeworthy first date scene with a sharp co-worker ranks with De Niro and Cybil Shepherd's in Taxi Driver.
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Fassbender's character wants to reach out to his sister. We know this because of the not-very-subtle close up of a single tear rolling down his face as she belts out an awkward arrangement of “New York, New York.” But he won't allow himself. He'll continue to masturbate at work and patron prostitutes in fancy hotels and, when he's feeling really low, hit the bars.
It's all very tragic, it's all very glamorous. But it is, forgive me, fake. Yes, I know sex addicts exist and their predilections can ruin their lives, but no one who looks (and has access to the charm) of Michael Fassbender would lead his life down this scuzzy road. I just feel that he'd be more successful at creating an environment that reinforced his choices.
Shame does a good job of showing us what it is like to have a “double life.” We are hip to the fact that Brandon is a pervert, so when a pretty girl walks by him and he looks at her butt, it is different than when a regular Joe Sixpack does this. It means something. In the world of Shame it means something because Brandon probably has a good shot at walking up to this stranger and bedding her. (And you thought Fassbender only had super powers in X-Men!) Shame asks us to believe that this is what's keeping Brandon from communicating with his sister or going out with the nice girl from the office. Frankly, I just don't find the connections to be all that believable. Or interesting.
There is artistry in Shame, to be sure. I mentioned the look, and I can't stress enough how much Carey Mulligan impresses. Fassbender, too, puts it all out there, exposing his vulnerable side when he isn't wearing one of his many masks. At its root, though, Shame feels like a weird hybrid of deviant wish fulfillment and a faux-European anti-intellectual statement for “artistry of the flesh.” All I can tell you is that as Fassbender was rolling his eyes in corporeal ecstasy during a prolonged, climactic menage-a-trois, I was simply rolling my eyes.
Right now I'm either coming off as an incurable prude or a male chauvinist pig. I'd like to believe that I am neither. I also think that the topic of sex addiction or, more importantly, the focus on sexual conquest in lieu of genuine human relationships is a noble, fascinating topic for a film. I would direct you to Mike Nichols and Jules Feiffer's collaboration Carnal Knowledge to see this handled in a much more powerful and meaningful way than in Shame.
