Michael Fassbender bares all in Steve McQueen’s Shame
Steve McQueen’s Shame opens with a remarkable sequence that is a masterclass in non-verbal communication. Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, a man who appears trapped in an empty cycle of casual sex. The film swiftly establishes an air of dispassionate routine, as we see Fassbender walk stark naked around his sparse apartment post coitus on two separate occasions. The atmosphere feels conspicuously cold and detached; one senses Brandon is taking no pleasure from his conquests.
This is conveyed on multiple levels: through the moody tones of Harry Escott’s score; through the clinical decor of Brandon’s apartment; and, most significantly, through Fassbender’s intuitively physical performance. However, the opening of this powerful film is only halfway done. Afterwards, we watch in wonder as Brandon silently flirts with a woman on a subway train, glimpses, smiles and sly glances taking the place of words. But McQueen then turns our emotions and expectations on their head when it’s revealed that the woman is wearing a wedding ring.
All of a sudden, the rules have changed, and when Brandon’s fervent interest leads to him pursuing the woman out of the train and into the station, his actions appear unsettling, frightening even. Within five minutes, McQueen and Fassbender have conveyed an extraordinary amount of complex information, but Shame is dotted with mini-masterpieces such as these. Fortunately, the film is more than the sum of its parts.
It transpires that Brandon is a sex addict, a man staring into an abyss which threatens to swallow him up. When he cannot sate his relentless appetite, he is surfing the internet or making journeys to the men’s toilet at work. And he has another problem: his equally desperate sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) has decided to stay in his apartment, something which threatens to put a dampener on his routine.
Hullo...
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Following on from his painterly, disturbing portrayal of the Maze Prison hunger strikers in 2008’s Hunger, McQueen solidifies his reputation as a director unafraid to go over to the dark side. His collaboration with Fassbender also soars to new heights, the actor baring all (in every sense of the word) and brutally exposing the insecurities of the male ego. Little wonder the Oscars found the movie hard to take. This is a movie which flays humanity raw rather than offering easy platitudes.
Brandon’s emotional degeneration is by turns disgusting, scary and pitiable, and McQueen’s penchant for long takes forces us to scrutinise this inscrutable individual. The film’s discreet visual style (less overtly stylised than Hunger) is tailored to the emotions of the central character: a world of corporate offices, faceless apartments and dimly lit nightclubs, a world which inevitably draws comparison with Taxi Driver. However, unlike Travis Bickle, Brandon isn’t so much disgusted by what he sees as disgusted with himself.
Perhaps that’s why he is unable to contain his violent self-loathing in Sissy’s presence: Brandon can see himself in her; he recognises they’re both damaged goods. It’s suggested that both siblings have fled a monstrous incident in their past but McQueen isn’t interested in verbose explanations. Instead, both Fassbender and Mulligan, two consummate performers, use all their skill to convey a tortured history through the slightest physical gestures and vocal inflections. Together, the pair are an absolute knockout, one of the most plausible brother-sister partnerships seen in a film in a very long time.
And when McQueen ruthlessly limits the focus to just Fassbender himself, the film is even more devastating. In what is perhaps the most heartbreaking scene in the film, Sissy intones a moody rendition of New York New York in a local club, draining the classic ballad of its vitality and bombast. Meanwhile in the audience, Brandon watches in a state somewhere between desolation and enchantment, clearly shaken to the core by Sissy’s haunting performance. As a single tear spills down his cheek, Fassbender suggests the agony that is eating Brandon up from the inside -but we know we’ll never understand what is driving him.
That the film is able to grip without offering concrete answers is a testament to the power of the script (a collaboration between McQueen and Abi Morgan); McQueen’s incisive yet understated direction; and Fassbender’s tremendous central performance. The sex meanwhile may have raised the pulse of international censors but that’s by the by. It’s not a titillating film; really, it could have centered on drugs or alcohol and produced the same effect. The focus instead is on the pain of addiction itself, and we can’t help but be dragged headlong into Brandon’s nightmare. It’s a gruesome, heart-wrenching journey but one that’s laden with as much compassion as despair.
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