Should You See Fassbender’s Fassmember in Shame Tonight?
Let our critic Tom Carson help you decide. The general sentiment of his review is along the lines of, “Yo, you should probably see this.” But it’s a bit more complicated than that. An excerpt:
McQueen has so much talent to burn that theaters ought to post warnings about smoke asphyxiation. There isn’t a frame in the movie that isn’t intricately planned—not only visually arresting, but designed to bear out the theme. Since that notoriously erratic performer New York City plays itself and his signature is long, fanatically controlled takes without a single flaw, the achievement really is kind of incredible. It’s just that, at times, people may find themselves marvelling, “Wow, that shot must have been insanely hard to get”—and McQueen, whose dedication to his material is at once impressive and peculiarly abstract, may not even consider that reaction symptomatic of a failure to involve us at what used to be called the human level.
Another side of Shame I don’t trust at all that—in the tradition of Closer, Eyes Wide Shut, and poor old Last Tango in Paris—it’s one more important-looking movie under the impression that the way to lay bare the truth about sexuality is by leaving out the rest of human experience. You know, spot the fallacy there. Beyond the obvious chic of letting us live vicariously, one reason this type of movie so often features well-heeled, fabulously comely people without material concerns is that it makes their monomania less farcical. Brandon’s life would be very different if his budget forced him to choose between call girls and paying for, say, a hernia operation. Come to think of it, that’s the sex-obsession movie I’d love to see—starring Paul Giamatti, maybe, or Kevin James.
Besides, there’s such a thing as “subtlety” that never stops hitting you over the head with a mallet. McQueen may think he’s playing it cool by never spelling out the thwarted-incest subtext driving Brandon and Sissy’s relationship, but all too often, the subtext is the only thing in sight. When Sissy asks her brooding bro why he’s so angry, you pine for a vintage grindhouse audience to shout back, “Because he wants to bang you, ya friggin’ nitwit! And he can’t.”
That’s why it’s faintly maddening that—thanks not only to the director’s formidable visual command, but the terrific performances he gets out of his cast—you kind of buy the movie while it’s going on. Luckily for us, McQueen’s control-freak side doesn’t extend to his actors, in that soul-crushing Kubrickian way. Fassbender is a powerhouse here, especially in some demanding scenes once Brandon’s impulses turn his behavior ever more degraded. (What, you didn’t think he’d become degraded? At least in movies, what else are threesomes for?) Not only is Mulligan’s work equally compelling, but you have to hand it to them both for tackling Shame at a stage of their careers when their agents must be screaming about the big bucks coming their way if they just play it safe. Even if they’re gambling that the artistic cred earned by being called “fearless” (the cliché for this sort of thing—just ask Charlotte Gainsbourg) is worth it, that’s fine with me.
Since McQueen knows what he’s got, one of his wittiest stratagems is to show both his stars full-frontal nude early on. For “there, that’s done with” insolence, his gamesmanship is hard to beat. Then he lets Fassbender and Mulligan demonstrate what they can do with their clothes on, and that goes for everybody else on-screen as well. As Brandon’s boss, James Badge Dale (The Pacific) looks more than ever like one of the most resourceful young actors around. Nicole Beharie, who plays a co-worker Brandon briefly pursues, has such poise and unpredictable timing in her big scene—a single-take restaurant conversation on their only public date—that it takes you several minutes to notice the tattletale shortage of pedestrians outside the joint’s window. Even an actress we only glimpse (she’s one more of Brandon’s hired bedmates) gets McQueen’s full interest and attention. While I’d love to be sure of her name, that’s none too easy with credits that list roles like “Late Night Lover #2.”
Because odds are you’re going to see Shame anyway, all this just amounts to saying that you won’t be wasting your time even if The Meaning of It All is on the dubious side.
