College is where the wheels of education come off and the things you learn really start shaping you as a human being. It's also where you are the most vulnerable to your professors' tastes. I remember the first time I was subjected to a Tsai Ming-Liang movie, it was like watching reruns of an 80's daytime soap I didn't know, in a language I didn't understand. I understood what he was trying to do, show the reality of his characters without any sugar coating whatsoever, but his execution was contemplative to a point of being painful. Steve McQueen's SHAME shares a lot with Tsai Ming-Liang filmmaking philosophy, yet a strong screenplay, fascinating themes and a sense of purpose supercharge this movie and turn it into a clever and magnetic piece of cinema.
Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is living two lives. He is a successful professional at the office and a sex addict at home. The life he built for himself and his dark secret seems to be working fine until his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) drops into his life, asking for shelter. She is everything he is not: an artists, slightly irresponsible, kind, trusting and able to fall in love at the bat of an eyelash. Sissy's candor throws Brandon's life out of balance. He steps out of his comfort zone, asking a colleague (the beautiful Nicole Beharie) on a date and faces the grim reality of what his life has become. Brandon is a slave to his sexual impulses and yet can only find solace in sex, so he sinks further down the hole he dug for himself.
SHAME is a movie that speaks to you as an intelligent person. It's not as common as you might think. It feels naked and loose without the usual Hollywoodian structure. The is no music to tell you how to feel. Every scene is treated with the same distant, observational mindset. The content of SHAME would've lent itself to a more traditional, manipulative execution, but Steve McQueen remains composed and disciplined all along. Two scenes jumped at me for their originality and boldness. Carey Mulligan's interpretation of New York, New York that has Brandon mysteriously moved and a dramatic scene * treated with a beautiful minimalism. Steve McQueen understands that it's not the amount of variables you throw in a scene that makes it work. It's how you approach them. The British director understands what makes a scene beautiful.
Steve McQueen also co-wrote the screenplay of SHAME, which is interesting, because he has faith in it. He is not interested in building pathos for his characters, instead he shows pathos, loneliness and dysfunction with his patient, observative eye. SHAME's disregard for traditional Hollywood narrative conventions is liberating. Any possible tragedy in the characters' background is suggested but never brought up. Their actions hint to the weight of their emotional burden, but never betray it. SHAME is supremely confident in its capacity to get the message it wants across and it's part of what makes it so magnetic. A movie about taboos should not wallow in emotional distress and SHAME keeps a cool, collected rationality for its entire duration. Steve McQueen never lets the difficult theme of his movie get the best of him.
I've heard somebody say in a professional environment once: ''We don't care if you're a good guy and a hard worker, what we need a tough guy and a smart worker. Is this you?'' That is the impression SHAME gave me of Steve McQueen. The movie's unflinching, almost scientific approach to visceral themes such as obsession and need is a breath of fresh air in the stale landscape of cinema. There are ways to tell a story that don't imply that somebody is a good or a bad guy. There are ways to show the flawed, but beautiful nature of human beings in a narrative and SHAME has one to offer. If you don't believe in minimalism as a storytelling technique, Steve McQueen, Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan have a problem with that. SHAME is dark, beautiful and tender display of human brokenness. Movie like that don't happen very often.
I've heard somebody say in a professional environment once: ''We don't care if you're a good guy and a hard worker, what we need a tough guy and a smart worker. Is this you?'' That is the impression SHAME gave me of Steve McQueen. The movie's unflinching, almost scientific approach to visceral themes such as obsession and need is a breath of fresh air in the stale landscape of cinema. There are ways to tell a story that don't imply that somebody is a good or a bad guy. There are ways to show the flawed, but beautiful nature of human beings in a narrative and SHAME has one to offer. If you don't believe in minimalism as a storytelling technique, Steve McQueen, Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan have a problem with that. SHAME is dark, beautiful and tender display of human brokenness. Movie like that don't happen very often.
* Can't say much more than that. That would be spoiling the most intense moment of SHAME.
