Most days, it takes very little to convince me a movie is worth seeing. A strong trailer, a decent tagline, The Rock: these are the things that I usually need from my movies. When Another-Day’s music/movie guru, Jordan Koen, talked up Shame a while back, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it. It’s not that I’m averse to watching dramatic or art films, but maybe that I’m more turned off by the sort of audience that sometimes ends up seeing and heaping praise on films like this. As it turns out from the screening I went to for this movie, it’s really the lady two rows behind me, laughing because Michael Fassbender is fucking a woman up against a window that’s the audience I don’t like. She has every right to laugh at whatever she wants, obviously. The movie even provides a few moments that make you want to laugh, albeit nervously.
Shame is full of contradictions like that. It’s by far one of the most engaging films I’ve ever seen. And it’s still fucking hard to watch.
The reason it’s so tough though isn’t because the movie’s too dense, too long or too pretentious. It’s because it is one of the most honest films I have ever seen. The film introduces us to Brandon, a seemingly successful but repressed New Yorker whose drifter sister, Sissy, has come to stay with him. We don’t learn a lot about him but there’s just enough there to allow viewers to infer things. What we do know about him, however, is that he’s a sex addict. Not because it’s ever outright stated to us by anyone in the film, but because the movie so effectively puts you right there in front of him to watch his addiction at work. Really, there are sections where he’s watching porn or having sex that are alternately very sparse in terms of what they outright tell you about the players involved, and really vivid in terms of what they show you and how that sticks with you. The whole film plays with this idea of the things we leave unsaid, but uses their absence to tell the viewer everything.
There’s never a point where things play out fast and loose with exposition, and yet director Steve McQueen – not this guy – never fails to infuse every inch of every scene with something that proves far more important: detail. McQueen takes no single shot for granted in constructing his narrative. There is a great moment near the movie’s climax where the subway train Brandon is on seems to break down and, as he sits back down on the train, we catch a glimpse of a poster advertising the transport network’s vow to work harder to improve their services. Little things like that show you how meticulous the filmmaker you’re dealing with is.
Another example of this comes in the form of Brandon’s boss, David, informing him that a company hardware check revealed terrabytes of really fucked up porn on his hard drive. There’s this lingering awkwardness as David seems to expect an explanation, then fills in the blank himself, accusing an intern. Brandon accepts this ‘out’ for his secret life, but never confirms the obvious lie they exchange. After he leaves the office the camera lingers on David a moment longer. And then, despite the fact that he’s in a fair amount of the film before then, Brandon’s boss is never seen or heard from again. It is an absolutely subtle expression of the themes underscoring the entire film and it’s staged depiction of the reality of secrets and convenient lies we all occupy on a daily basis.
After the movie I got into a bit of a debate with a friend about its content and purpose. She wondered why movies like this get made, other than perhaps because of some sadistic need of the director’s to make an audience experience the titular shame. Generally, she said, she’d avoid a person like Brandon in real life. There are billions of people out there every day and everywhere who would do what she suggests and Brandon’s boss does and bow out of someone else’s life at the first hint of some deep-seated issues poking out at the seams. And that’s completely understandable. Actually having to acknowledge and experience what someone like Brandon goes through is difficult enough on film. It must be horror in “real life”. Still, somehow, the film compels you to keep your arse in the seat and experience it.
A huge part of that is because Michael Fassbender is such an incredible actor. Really, there isn’t a moment in this movie where you don’t find yourself on that same precipice of contradiction the film’s created for you. There’s a great desire to pierce the film separating you from this man’s tragic life, to reach out and help him. And that’s all in Fassbender’s warm, longing stares directed at so many of the people around him. And then there’s the other aspect of the film that keeps Brandon at arms length, making him an alien enigma that you want to get as far away from as possible. For an actor to balance that amount of tension inside a character so carefully is astonishing. Carey Mulligan is also incredibly effective as Sissy, holding her own in scenes where she has to go up against her brother’s difficult, aggressive persona and never coming across as anything but the real deal; a sister, equally damaged, reaching out to the only person she loves despite constantly coming up short. She’s a woman affected as much by her own “damage” as what Brandon’s going through and she never lets you forget that.
So yes, Shame is amazing. Steve McQueen makes sure that this is more than just a trip to the cinema, but an expression of someone’s life through an art form that’s often solely associated with trailers, taglines and The Rock. And I love that about the art form when it’s there to help me escape if life gets tough. But then, films like Shame are there specifically to remind me that life’s tough for everybody.