Shame





Directed By: Steve McQueen

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Nicole Beharie, and James Badge Dale

I will never ever forget that I saw Steve McQueen's Shame on this night.  Given the well-deserved NC-17 rating for the film, there's a lot of material with which I can play here on Sobriety Test.  It's like Steve McQueen went into this film thinking about all the different ways and positions in which his star Michael Fassbender could have sex or jerk off.  When looking at the menu of options, he just said he wanted everything, and we certainly got it all on the big screen.  For the longest time, I was trying to decide whether this film is high-class porn or pioneering filmmaking.  With a few drinks in my system, I think Shame is a bit of both.

At first glance, Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is your everyday urbanite.  He's 30-something years old and is just another worker in corporate America.  He lives in New York in a one-bedroom apartment.  What you don't know about Brandon is that he's a sex addict and has absolutely no control over his urges.  He picks up girls at bars.  He hires prostitutes.  He has orgies.  He downloads porn on any computer on which he can get his hands.  He does live chats with nude girls.  He masturbates at home and work.  This dude has got some damn serious issues. There are treatments for those addicted to sex such as SA (Sexaholics Anonymous), and he's clearly not interested in them.  When his wayward sister (Carey Mulligan) crashes at his apartment, she disrupts his routine of getting his needs met, and Brandon's life rapidly spirals out of control.

Steve McQueen's Shame is definitely bold filmmaking. It may be a bit too bold at times.  I saw a little too much of Fassbender in the nude.  I clearly wasn't ready for that and needed a little liquid courage.  A few shots would have certainly helped at the start of the film.  Aside from that, the first half of the film could easily be misconstrued as efficient porn.  The dialogue was minimal, while the sex was plentiful.

At the same time, Shame is brilliant filmmaking.  I respect what McQueen is trying to accomplish with this film.  Sex is really just the addiction into which McQueen chooses to delve.  He really wants to show how an addiction is something that can rip one's life apart when left uncontrolled.  To the addict though, that urge that drives them is all that matters until their world comes crashing down.  McQueen really could only use something like a sex addiction, a topic that remained largely unexplored on the big screen until now.  Alcoholism and drug addictions have been done to death on the big screen.  If McQueen did those, this would have been a Lifetime movie that your mom would watch on Saturday night.

Shame gets a 0.06% rating, but I would like to emphasize that this is an average.  The introduction to Fassbender's Brandon is all sex. There's no substantive story, just a portrayal of a sex addict out of control.  He's just getting laid and jerking off.  That definitely merits some hard liquor.  The second half of the film is a bit meatier with some great acting and emotional, albeit short-lived storytelling.  McQueen builds on the portrayal of this sex addict to reach a powerful climax (and I mean that in the least sexual sense whatsoever).  You don't need a drop of liquor for this part of the movie. Have some shots for the first half, but you definitely need to be sober for the second half of the film.