Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

Steve McQueen’s Shame received a lot of attention for the wrong reasons. Its NC-17 rating, mature subject matter and full frontal male nudity gave critics, audiences and industry insiders so much to talk about that they all missed the point: Shame is a brilliant film.

Brandon is a young, successful New York professional with a dirty little secret--he is addicted to sex. Our introduction to Brandon is almost comical. Without saying a word, he can easily seduce a beautiful stranger on the subway or in a bar. These chance encounters aren’t enough to feed Brandon’s addiction, however. He requires daily doses of porn, prostitutes and masturbation to keep his demons at bay. Every other aspect of Brandon’s life is carefully ordered and controlled. He lives alone in an expensive apartment that is so uncluttered and devoid of any personality it resembles an upscale doctor’s office.

Brandon’s sense of order and routine is disrupted when his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), intrudes. After Brandon ignores Sissy’s initial attempts at reconnecting, he comes home one evening to find her in his shower. She (completely nude) begs him for a place to stay and he begrudgingly agrees. This is where Brandon’s compartmentalization of his life begins to erode. Sissy is such a polar opposite to Brandon that I initially wondered if she was an invented alter-ego, much like Tyler Durden in Fight Club.  

Where Brandon is responsible, Sissy is reckless. He is clean; she is messy. He is measured; she is impulsive. Contrasts abound, but the most important one is that while  human connection terrifies Brandon, Sissy throws herself headfirst into relationships, becoming clingy and needy. An unspeakable incident in their shared past has left both of them irrevocably damaged, but the damage manifests itself in different ways. McQueen is wise to leave the incident unspoken--its horror is stronger when it can only be imagined. Interacting with Sissy reminds Brandon of his buried trauma, sending his addiction spiraling out of control.

Sean Bobbit’s use of blue/gray filters and static long takes reflect Brandon’s coldness and detachment.. He has created a life in which he is totally self-sufficient. The one long tracking shot of Brandon running through the city is riveting. McQueen’s challenge with this film was to create a male sex addict who doesn’t come off as a misogynistic pig. It’s to his credit (and certainly Fassbender’s) that we feel more empathy for Brandon than revulsion. Fassbender and Mulligan inhabit these siblings with palatable pain and fear. There is real chemistry and a sense of history between them, as well. 

It’s hard not to compare Shame to McQueen’s earlier collaboration with Fassbender, Hunger. Both are character studies, although Hunger has political implications, while Shame is highly personal. Both are infused with realism in the form of Fassbender’s tremendous acting talent and both are centered around basic human needs; in one film the denial of that need and the other, the absolute surrender to it. 

With Shame, McQueen achieves the near-impossible. He not only de-glamorizes sex in a sex-obsessed culture, but strips away judgement to humanize an addiction that is often the butt of jokes. Shame is not an “issue” film, but a fascinating depiction of a man who is working through his pain in the only way he knows how.