2011, Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen’s sophomore feature Shame is, quite frankly, an unrelenting and absolutely devastating work of art. This is the kind of film that is able to demonstrate the true emotional power that the medium can achieve, as he does in spades through the journey of Brandon Sullivan, a New Yorker who has built his life around his sexual addiction. I say that he has built his life around the addiction deliberately, as that is how the film presents this disease of his.

Brandon has a job, he has friends that he goes and gets drinks with, but ultimately everything he does has no more consequence to him than trying to allow him to survive until his next fix. Whether it’s purchasing the talents of an escort or masturbating in the bathroom at work, Brandon is constantly craving sexual satisfaction and it seems as though he is never able to fully achieve it. When his sister Sissy shows up and throws a rift into his carefully plotted routine, the rift sends Brandon on a descent into a personal and emotional hell that refuses to let the audience take a moment to breathe and collect themselves.

One thing that I found particularly interesting in the film’s descent was in the way the settings changed over the course of it. At the beginning we start with these lush, clean and very antiseptic environments, from Brandon’s work to the bars to his own apartment. Even when he was hiring a prostitute there never felt as though there was any danger thanks to the safety of the surroundings. When he starts to unravel though, the settings take on a much more grim atmosphere and things instead begin to feel very real and dangerous as a result. It’s a subtle touch, but incredibly effective.

McQueen, who co-wrote the film with Abi Morgan, takes an interesting approach when it comes to exploring what drives these two characters. Most films would spend time developing their backstory and allowing the audience to understand what has brought them to who they are in the present day, Brandon the angry and frustrated addict and Sissy the emotionally distraught attention-craver, but the writers wisely step away from trying to explore the characters in that fashion. Instead, they present the audience with no explanation, no rationale in their history to have it all make sense, which for me allowed the characters to feel much more real and in many ways empathetic. I found a lot of aspects within Brandon and Sissy to which I could relate to on a very deep level, which made their emotional journeys that much more powerful to me.

Carey Mulligan’s portrayal of Sissy is incredibly charged, an erratic and painfully realized depiction of a woman constantly on the edge of madness. She has a history of self-abuse and is a woman who needs love, just the simple act of being loved, but can’t seem to get it from anywhere. It presents an interesting contrast between her and Brandon, as she opens herself fully in the hopes that someone will come in while he shuts himself off and wants nothing to do with genuine emotion. In casting Brandon, McQueen chose to once again go with his muse Michael Fassbender and what comes out of the duo’s reunion is a true force of nature.

This is the kind of acting achievement that should be studied, as Fassbender dives full on into this character and lets the audience in to this sick addiction. In his eyes, his facial structure, the simple way that he moves his body, you get that urge that he is always looking for his next fix and this is a key part of what makes Fassbender’s portrayal so remarkable. He taps into something deep here in Brandon and when he’s sitting at a dinner table on a date or out at a bar with co-workers, you can see in him that he is trying to figure out how to manipulate the situation to his ultimate goal. His addiction has brought him to a place where he no longer cares about meaningless conversation or genuine relationships, but instead has one destination and his focus is solely trained on how to get there.

It’s when he goes on a date with co-worker Marianne (played by Nicole Beharie) that he starts to feel something new and unfamiliar, perhaps a genuine connection with this woman. He ends the date with a perfect opportunity to make his move but instead asks her if she wants to see him again, on a later date where he whisks her away to a fancy hotel to commit the act he wanted at the start. Here though, finding himself in a strange state of emotions, he is unable to perform and it’s this inability that sends his addiction into it’s full extreme.

Brandon’s fall is a haunting display of an addiction brought to it’s lowest level, ultimately culminating in an emotional breakdown that was relentless, devastating and absolutely cathartic. The combination of McQueen, Morgan, Fassbender and Mulligan here has created an experience so unbelievably raw and real, it shook me to my core and resonated deep within long after the film itself had run out. It’s an incredible work that stands out among a year packed with truly impressive cinema.

A

Film #135 of The 365 Film Challenge.