SHAME Post -release Discussion

Shame is a killer.  Such a sad, beautiful portrait of two lost souls.  It's a movie that accomplishes two of the hardest things to do in movie, which is portray a solitary, interior journey without gratuitous use of exposition or declarative flashbacks, and to reveal sexual addiction without irony or using it as a punchline.  There have been only a couple of movies I can think of that successfully accomplish the first thing (An Angel at my Table and The Pianist are what come to mind) and maybe Carnal Knowledge that tackles the second.  It's rare, in both cases, and I think Steve McQueen did an incredible job bringing these characters to life, with Fassbender and Carey Mulligan as his unflinching collaborators. 

I completely agree with your take, SYI.  This movie completely shook me.  A beautiful, heroic, underappreciated film.

Fassbender was the best actor of the year.  However the film could have had some small improvements to it...

1. He should have had one or two encounters with some uglier ladies.  It would have been more convincing that he really was a walking erection with no control (yes, the club scene was very convincing).  I remember Greg Kinnear in Autofocus having sex with less than hot people. That made his debrauchery more pathetic.

2.  This movie owes a lot to Autofocus blazing a trail 10 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jake Gambino 

Fassbender was the best actor of the year.  However the film could have had some small improvements to it...

 

1. He should have had one or two encounters with some uglier ladies.  It would have been more convincing that he really was a walking erection with no control (yes, the club scene was very convincing).  I remember Greg Kinnear in Autofocus having sex with less than hot people. That made his debrauchery more pathetic.

 

2.  This movie owes a lot to Autofocus blazing a trail 10 years ago

Autofocus was brilliant.  But I am made slightly uncomfortable by the idea that somehow being with "ugly" women is more pathetic or debauched than being with beautiful women.  Having compulsive sex without emotion and being too filled with shame to be truly intimate with anyone is really the thing. 

I think this movie is terrible, honestly, and I love Fassbender and I loved Steve McQueen's last movie (Hunger). It feels like an empty shell of a movie, self-indulgent and overly somber without a hint of emotional or intellectual heft to back up its overwhelming sense of self-importance. It's downright laughable how wrong-headed some of the scenes are (the New York New York sequence, Fassbender's anguished face in the three-way as the overwrought score reaches a crescendo, the lengthy static-shot argument between Mulligan and Fassbender with a black and white cartoon inexplicably playing in the foreground).

I wrote a review of it a while back here, but I defer to the just released Vulture Poll of Worst Films of the Year, which produced the following couple of choice selections I personally found hysterical:

From David Edelstein:
Shame. Watching Carey Mulligan slowly torture “New York, New York” to death, I passed the time writing my Opposite World review: “Mulligan strips away the song’s facile optimism and lays bare her heartbreaking need for affirmation. Devastating!” Most hilarious moment: Michael Fassbender’s silent scream of despair in mid-orgy.

Michael Koresky, Reverse Shot
1. Shame. Steve McQueen’s tale of pursuit-of-sexual-gratification-as-stations-of-the-cross punished its hollow shell of a protagonist (a too-game Michael Fassbender) as much as it flattered its audience by making them feel superior to him. Its acclaim isn’t mind-boggling only because it’s so clearly calibrated — in artful composition, self-serious score — to make you think you’re watching something of import. It’s actually childish, chastising, moralizing drivel so histrionic it has its main character literally wailing on his knees in front of the New York City skyline at the end. Nice dick, though.

Some SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS are discussed.

I didn't hate the movie, but I'm gonna side with Parker on this one.  Aside from specific moments and the performances, I wasn't all that impressed with this.  Something about it felt a bit rote as it approached the end.  It felt inevitable, but I didn't really feel it as the film (and its overbearing score) definitely wanted me to.

My favorite stretch of the film was when it focused on him trying to improve himself through Marianne.  I've read that the two actors are dating now.  Whatever chemistry they have in real life really seemed to bleed through and it was a bright spot along the film's somewhat monotonous tone.

But of course, things don't work out.  Of course his high-highs, low-lows sister cuts herself.  Of course he sees that woman on the train again.  Of course it ends on an intentionally ambiguous note.  These are all artistic choices I could get behind if I was engaged with the film.  But I wasn't.  It ended up feeling oddly formulaic.

Caught it recently.  I thought the film was powerful and brilliant.  Totally gripping.  The ending was my favorite bit....now obviously sexually charged and invigorated (notice her changed hair, more confident look and posture), the woman was possibly headed down the same dark path Fassbender's character just came out of, the tables having been turned...his look says it all.  Best performance of the year and he wasn't even nominated.  

NC-17?  People are more comfortable with bullets and bombs, than penis' and vaginas.  Sad.

Interesting.  I didn't see that final moment with the married woman that way at all, since what Fassbender was going through (sex addiction) seems far more extreme than a woman considering adultery.

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Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

Interesting.  I didn't see that final moment with the married woman that way at all, since what Fassbender was going through (sex addiction) seems far more extreme than a woman considering adultery.

Adultery is obviously a gateway drug silly.

In all seriousness, she may or may not become a sex addict, but it's not the point really.  That moment, all that matters is Fassbender's character's mindset IMO...it's like somebody who just OD'd and then sees somebody light up a joint later...they're going to probably overreact, but it's still from their point of view and therefore still important.  It's their journey in the film.  The woman being willing to cheat on her husband is more than enough to ruin somebody's life...she doesn't have to have gay sex, or have a threesome like he did.

I think it's more because I read it as a moment in which the focus is still on Fassbender and whether or not he'll 'fall off the wagon.'

It's all in the look to me.  I don't interpret his look as temptation, he doesn't look like he's deciding on whether or not to follow and fuck this girl, he looks like he's thinking of the places she had to go mentally to justify even considering doing this.  She was the only woman in the movie to reject him, she gave him what he really needed at the beginning....her actions said "No, this is wrong.  You're wrong.  Stop now."  But he couldn't see it.  

But now she was turning, and that kills him.  At least that's how I feel about it.

No, I think that's a completely valid reading of the ending.  And I think I like it better than the way I saw it.

Either way, so what? He's either going to continue to be an addict, or he's going to try and change. What's the power of leaving the ending ambiguous? If we cared about the character, that might be different. The only thing I know about him is that he's a sex addict. And that he has a weird relationship with his sister that's always left vague and unclear. I understand that might be McQueen's point, but unfortunately we don't understand the tragedy without knowing the human being. There are all kinds of addicts all the time. The impression I get from the movie is "sex addicts be sad." No shit. I don't need a movie to tell me that, and since I've seen countless other movies deal with addiction with characters that are far more interesting, this is a minor film to say the least.

I also hate McQueen's answer about Fassbender not being nominated, or critics of the movie in general not being "comfortable with sex." That's incredibly condescending and feels like a lazy excuse. I'm fine with graphic scenes of sex, but I'm not fine with a movie full of half baked ideas thinking it's more important than it deserves. Leap Year from Mexico is a much stronger movie (with a better central performance too) that deals with the destructive power of a sexual relationship far more potently than Shame could dare to. It got released last year too. You don't hear anyone crying about how people don't understand it or how nobody got nominated. Get over yourself and admit that there is a possibility that you made a bad film.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parker 

What's the power of leaving the ending ambiguous? 

I don't feel the ending to be ambiguous.  I got the strong sense he's a changed man, but that's my own take on it, and I think that's the point anyway.

McQueen leaves alot intentionally vague, but I think Fassbender's performance is so great that you don't need to know a helluva lot more about the guy.  And I think we know enough about him to get the tragedy.  The tragedy isn't even the sex addiction.  The character is pretty clearly a tragedy all by himself.  

Absolutely nothing suggests to me that he's changed in the end. Certainly not Fassbender's performance.

And yes, the character is a tragedy. It's a tragedy that's he's not a character. You honestly found yourself caring about this guy? Why?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parker 

Absolutely nothing suggests to me that he's changed in the end. Certainly not Fassbender's performance.

That's fine, agree to disagree.  

Why do I need to care about him to find him interesting?  I didn't care about Daniel Plainview or Jake Lamotta or Travis Bickle or Dirk Diggler or Alex from Clockwork Orange.  I'm not comparing Shame to those films, just illustrating a point.  I find the psychology and behavior interesting, which is what engaged me.  If it didn't engage you, big deal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ambler 

 

Why do I need to care about him to find him interesting?  I didn't care about Daniel Plainview or Jake Lamotta or Travis Bickle or Dirk Diggler or Alex from Clockwork Orange.  I'm not comparing Shame to those films, just illustrating a point.  I find the psychology and behavior interesting, which is what engaged me.  If it didn't engage you, big deal.

I don't "like" the characters you mention, but I do find them interesting (and I'm guessing that since you mentioned them, and since they're all great characters, you do too).. I literally know next to nothing about Fassbender's Shame character other than that he's addicted to sex (and has a flair for the overly dramatic. Oh, and that he likes to jog). Again, I realize that not knowing the character is probably part of McQueen's point, but it's a moot point considering that all it manages to communicate is that the addiction has become all he is. Unfortunately, that's all the movie is; that point, over and over again. There's no growth, there's no change, so there's nothing to latch onto. Agree to disagree, yes, but I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from. I know you think he has changed, but again, I just don't see it. 

I won't go so far as to say I didn't like it.  I got caught up in its hypnotic rhythm more than once, and Fassbender and Mulligan are great.  But I also couldn't help but think this could have been the third act of a truly unsettling story of Brandon and Sissy, rather than the slight by comparison focus on Brandon's sexual addiction that resulted from their complicated history.  I can't imagine there's any other answer to their relationship other than he was in love with her, and hated himself for it, and her damage forced her into a co-dependency thing where she kept coming back to him even though he was probably the source of a lot of that damage in the first place.  That's how I read it anyway.

I'm pretty sure the "shame" in the title refers to a past sexual relationship between a brother and sister, in addition to Brandon's sex addiction.

Along the same lines, I think shame is the state they both live in, something that took root deep in their souls and metastasized completely in their adult lives.  It's what they see when they close their eyes.  It's what probably drove them into an unnatural relationship when they were kids. It's the invisible wall between Brandon and the woman from his office.  It's what Sissy drowns out with the illusion that she's wanted by these men and what Brandon self-medicates against through obsessive sex, the nastier and more meaningless the better.  It's an untreated sickness in both of them.  Such a sad movie. 

ETA:  I don't think he's a changed man in the end.  He only sees the hell he's in more clearly; he's not out of it.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barkatthemoon 

I'm pretty sure the "shame" in the title refers to a past sexual relationship between a brother and sister

For what it's worth, Fassbender and Mulligan said McQueen never mentioned anything like this.  I think had more to do with them just coming from a bad, possibly abusive background.

Mulligan's character has a line that kind of says it..."We're not bad people, we just come from a bad place."