Shame

This might wind up being sort of scattershot and hit-and-miss. I’m not entirely sure how to write about Shame, a film that is by turns disturbing and compelling. Some of it is difficult to watch, but director Steve McQueen employs a steady hand throughout, alternating moments of controlled chaos with long takes that are often uncomfortable, and which force the audience to look frankly at Brandon and try to see inside of him. Mostly I want to tell you about the ending, which I really liked; but the problem, of course, is that it would ruin the picture for you. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe the NC-17 rating has already ruined it for you, or maybe you don’t even know about the movie and will never see it and could not care less.

It’s the story of Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender), a thirtysomething New York suit with a nearly crippling sex addiction. Based on what I had read about the film before seeing it, I was expecting something actively unpleasant, in the vein of Blue Valentine; but I was surprised to discover, fairly early on, that there is a not-so-thin veneer (which is an idea that might actually be counterintuitive, but go with me here) of normalcy, underneath which Brandon acts out his sexual impulses with something close to total secrecy.

There is a minimum of dialogue, which serves to let Brandon’s actions speak for themselves; and Mr. Fassbender does a remarkable job of using facial expressions in a wide range of situations, though most notably to make the audience aware that he is aware that he has a problem...and that he is aware that the problem has grown beyond the point where he can even attempt to rationalize his behavior...and that he is aware that he is completely unable to change his behavior. He understands the nature of his problem in a way that seems to convey both desperation and acceptance. Brandon is somewhere between the two—a true addict, who accepts his problem as part of his self, at the same time that he can still but barely glimpse light at the end of the tunnel. He can, in theory, see a Brandon Sullivan who is completely free of this affliction; but most of him has begun to realize that this is a probem he can only hope to manage, not cure.

Addiciton, of course, is wrapped up in repetition and routine, which Mr. McQueen establishes early in the film with scenes of Brandon going from bed to bathroom by way of his answering machine. Not only are his motions the same, but the message on the machine is always virtually the same. It’s his sister, she wants him to pick up, she keeps saying, “pick up,” as though she is certain that he is screening her calls; but Brandon, of course, does not pick up. He seems to show no reaction at all to his sister’s exhortations. There are desensitizations on top of desensitizations, and patterns are established that will re-emerge throughout the film.

And then there is Sissy (Carey Mulligan), Brandon’s unimaginatively-named sister. At some point, she decides that calling Brandon isn’t going to get her anywhere, so she crashes his apartment instead of waiting for an invitation. If Brandon has forgotten that he has given her a key to his apartment should she need it, he can perhaps be forgiven; he’s got quite a lot else on his plate at the moment, thanks. That he forgot the fact of giving Sissy the key, however, sets up the scene in which he returns home one evening to hear music blaring on—seriously—his record player. He gets his trusty baseball bat out of the closet and creeps slowly through the apartment until he gets to the bathroom, into which he bursts, brandishing the bat. He scares the bejesus out of Sissy, of course. All she wanted to do was take a hot shower and try to put out of her mind for a moment or two the breakup that brought her to Brandon’s place. Instead, she gets into an argument with her brother while standing before him stark naked.

You could probably say that this is just gratuitous nudity, and you might be right. The camera lingers on Ms. Mulligan for a long time (even if she is mostly seen in a mirror and not straight on); but it’s neither sexy nor lascivious. It might even be metaphorical. Sissy is nearly at rock bottom; she would not have come to Brandon if she had had anywhere else to go. Unlike her brother, she has no shame; she is willing to stand naked before the world, willing to account for what she has done—or not done—with her life. She is a mess, as Brandon is a mess; but Sissy is honest about it. When she sings “New York, New York” at a nightclub (she gets a temporary singing gig, Brandon goes to see her), she delivers a haunting rendition of the song. She has not come to New York to make it, but rather to try one more time—maybe one last time, it’s that haunting (and that’s actually Ms. Mulligan singing)—not to fail.

Something else I’ve been thinking about is whether or not it is important to know why Brandon and Sissy are a mess. There are oblique references to their having been born in New Jersey—though Brandon also at one point says that he lived in Ireland until he was a teenager. Being from New Jersey does not make one a bad person; nor does it give any one a person a decided disadvantage in life over a person born in any of the other forty-nine states (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter). Toward the end of the film, we hear Sissy say in voice-over, of herself and her brother, that “We aren’t bad people. We just come from a bad place.” More metaphor, of course, but unlike the shower scene, the symbol doesn’t immediately leap to mind—probably because it doesn’t matter that they have come from a bad place (though I’m not married to this idea). What matters is where they go from here.

I also can’t decide if some of the narrative thrust of the third act is hokey or not. It felt hokey when I was watching it, like Mr. McQueen felt like he had to hurry up and get to the end, by way of a couple of familiar tropes from the school of family melodrama; but looking back on it with almost a week’s worth of hindsight, I’m not sure that’s a fair assessment. There is certainly a shift in urgency, but I’m not sure whether it’s an organic shift that necessarily accompanies a story hurtling toward its climax, or a directorial slip; and if it is the latter, Mr. McQueen can certainly be forgiven, having to that point done a very fine job of controlling a potentially chaotic story.

And so now we have come to the end. It’s a silent moment, but it says so much with eyes and facial expressions. Mr. Fassbender did not receive an Oscar nomination for his work on this film (which is unfortunate), despite his having garnered nearly two dozen nominations from other festivals and critics groups—and a win in Venice. His work is excellent throughout the film, but the degree of nuance in the final scene is just magnificent. Actors nominate actors for Oscars, so I can’t blame the Academy’s prudishness for this particular slight. Some of Mr. Fassbender’s fellows may have chosen to nominate him for David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, rather than for Shame. I would have liked to root for this film come Oscar night.