{ London Film Fest 2011: Shame. }

[delga]

First, a note. I wrote these three entries yesterday; posting today, having edited for clarity.

--

Shame
Director: Steve McQueen
Writer: Abi Morgan
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale
Trailer

“We’re not bad people, Brandon. We just come from a bad place.”

It’s been about an hour since I got out of the cinema. I took the circuitous route to Southbank, dallying slightly on the bridge because, despite the lower temperatures, London has sun and clear blue skies today, and is beautiful.

Shame is the only one of the films in my schedule for which I failed to get tickets beforehand. I ended up standing at the door an hour early and making small talk with other hopefuls. I was not feeling positive. How many seats could they possibly have? I was about twentieth in line. It didn’t look likely.

In actual fact, I got the second to last ticket, front row, and the film was about a minute or so in by the time I had inched my way to my seat. (It was dark, and there were steps to navigate.) Made it.

I wanted to see Shame because Hunger (also by Steve McQueen) was visceral, and Michael Fassbender’s trajectory as an actor makes me – and me alone, I suspect – laugh. Plus, Care Mulligan! Sold! I wasn’t too fussed when I initially discovered that I didn’t manage to get tickets, especially as Abi Morgan’s Masterclass – for which I am currently queuing – had appeared to be sold out and I had managed to get tickets for that. And then I realised that Morgan had written Shame, and I was very, very fussed.

The film is about Brandon Sullivan (played by Fassbender) who is suffering from a sex addiction. His existence is carefully ordered and still at mercy to his obsession. His life begins to fray when his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan) comes to stay, thereby infringing on Brandon’s privacy, and the sphere in which he orchestrates his addiction.

In terms of the script, it’s a shallow film. If you took the actual sum of words, it wouldn’t add up to much. There is also a lot of nudity. I know, I know, it’s about Brandon’s proclivities, but it doesn’t shy away from cold intimacies – the simple truth of walking around naked in your how home, using the shower, the bathroom, masturbating, watching porn. I think anyone looking to be titillated may be disappointed. There is an abundance of sex, but the only sex scene that isn’t short-lived or fragmentary is the one that is interrupted as Brandon slowly loses his mind to his obsession.

What I loved about the film was the emphasis on Brandon’s actions. A lot of the scenes follow him in the mundane patterns of his life and we’re forced, as his audience, to live the duration of those patterns with him. There’s no cut from him entering his building, to exiting the lift on his floor – we travel with him in the elevator for every agonising moment. We follow him through the opening beats of an excruciatingly awkward first date. We watch him taking a run, block after block of New York City rushing by without break. And the minutiae of dealing with his misogynist boss (played by an almost unrecognisable James Badge Dale) who judges Brandon – however inadvertently – when from the audience perspective, Brandon’s methods are at least cleaner, and perhaps more honest. For the most part, Brandon hurts only himself.

There are hints to Brandon and Sissy’s past, that it was unstable, but never illuminated, and I think this is mostly because McQueen and Morgan didn’t want to blame Brandon’s illness on anything. Brandon, ultimately, is lonely. Sissy, then, is the obvious answer to his inability to connect to people, but instead she upsets his privacy, therefore throwing Brandon’s control off. If you can’t indulge yourself at home, where can you go?

I loved the way Shame was filmed, and I loved the film score. I loved watching Sissy singing New York, New York, Mulligan’s face the only thing in the middle of the screen, the camera unflinching in watching her as it is in watching Brandon. I loved the tenderness between Mulligan and Fassbender, and the strange shamelessness between them – that Brandon should be so incensed to have his sister bear witness to his sexual tastes, but can argue with her whilst one or other of them is completely naked.

I think by the end of the film you are as driven and wound as Brandon, that you feel his desperation with him, keenly. Fassbender is incredibly subtle, which he and the camera have cause to be. As I said, the script is incredibly surface level, but necessarily so. Almost everything that happens does so without dialogue. But when the camera stops, it does so with intent. During Brandon’s awkward first date with his co-worker, the camera doesn’t flinch, though he does. Brandon’s argument with Sissy never shows either of their faces front-on – the audience is eavesdropping, sitting one row behind them, and ever so close. It’s masterful in that way, and the script is commendable, sparing and letting the camera speak instead. There is no clutter. Morgan and McQueen between them have cut off all detritus.

Earlier this week I saw Death and the Maiden at the newly-renamed Harold Pinter Theatre, which, whilst I enjoyed (in a manner of speaking – it’s heavy stuff) I am not sure I would recommend. I do not know that I would recommend Shame. I don’t know that I can tell you it is good. I can tell you it is skilled; I can tell you that the performances are strong. I do not think I can tell you that its strength lies in storytelling, but I can tell you that I was arrested by it. For a film that is sometimes in the dirt of human intimacy, it is remarkably clean and cold. The New York City which Brandon habits is sleek, gilded, and I suspect he feels he tarnishes it. Sissy is another kind of mess, but like her brother, it doesn’t outwardly show. The camera never fractures on her. It is not a gritty film, but it is certainly beautiful. And the beauty, juxtaposed with Brandon’s slow, spiralling descent, is what made this film worthwhile for me. I don’t know that I can recommend it wholeheartedly, but I can say that it appealed to me immensely, that I was never outside of it, and I hope to see it again on general release in January 2012.