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Movie Takes
Shame
Sex addiction is no fun indeed, even in New York, New York.
Asked to show my concern for a victim of sex addiction, I am minded to reply with the guy who wrote: “Would it be heartless to suggest that, in a crisis-riddled world, this is one problem we should not spend too much time worrying about?” Steve McQueen’s Shame — which, as someone once said of the London Sunday Times’s “Culture” section, seems to have been named for the thing they left out — is a movie about sex addiction, but its hero, played by Michael Fassbender, is not really an effective poster-boy for the disease, if disease it be. That’s because the movie is directed at cinéastes and not those contemplating their year-end charitable giving. You can also tell this by the omission by the authors — Mr. McQueen co-wrote the screenplay with Abi Morgan — of a plot. Instead, they have focused with a laser-like intensity on the visual correlates of its hero’s highly interesting affliction.
Thus the film begins with a long take in which Brandon, Mr. Fassbender’s character, very slowly rouses himself from what is apparently meant to be a state of post-coital lassitude in a pose which recalls that of a less discreet Mars in Botticelli’s “Mars and Venus” — except that here there is no classical context, no Martian back-story in armorial form, no youthful satyrs playing with the armor — and, above all, no Venus. Instead, our immediately subsequent but unaccustomed glimpses of Brandon in a state of nakedness doing things that are normally done alone, including a shot from behind of his urinating and another (picked up from American Beauty) through the shower’s glass door of his masturbating, are meant to stress the state of isolation his condition may be supposed to entail. This is further reinforced by a female voice leaving a desperate message on his answering machine which he ignores as he goes about his morning routine.
Throughout the rest of the film, Brandon experiences his ups and downs along with sexual encounters of various kinds and we are left in no doubt that, whatever we may have thought beforehand, sex addiction is definitely not a barrel of laughs. Particularly sad is the fact that his obsession is so emotionally barren and so isolating that he eschews intimacy even with his vulnerable and psychologically fragile sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), who is the voice on the answering machine and who invites herself to come and stay with him in his Manhattan bachelor pad. But what happens as a result either of Brandon’s sex addiction or of his attempts to shut his sister out, emotionally if not physically, the film does not (quite) tell us, any more than it tells us anything about the origins either of Brandon’s mania or of Sissy’s delicacy.
One or two things of consequence happen, perhaps, but the consequences are omitted as Mr. McQueen’s camera draws back and leaves its broken-off story to be completed — or not, as the case may be — by the viewer. Brandon’s fitful attempts to break out of his self-imposed prison into narrative, which is to say into “relationships,” whether with his sister or with a co-worker (Nicole Beharie) whom he takes on an awkward date (in the non-“sex-worker” sense) are his way of trying to break his addiction’s hold on him at the same time they are the film’s way of apparently attempting to break into its own narrative. His inability to make any genuinely human contact therefore becomes the counterpart of the film’s inability or unwillingness to give us the ending, and with it the meaning, that we want.
The result is rather similar to what Mr. McQueen attempted in his previous film, Hunger, about the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands, which also starred Mr. Fassbender. “Hunger” and “Shame” are both human feelings wrenched from the narrative context in which we normally experience them. In other words, there has to be some kind of story to explain these feelings, at least in their non-trivial manifestations. We naturally want to know why these people are subjecting themselves to the sorts of sufferings they do, but Mr. McQueen supplies only superficial explanations or no explanations at all, lest these should interfere with the purity of the emotional experience he wants to show us. In doing this, he all but strips his characters of their humanity, making them vessels of animal feeling in a way that is a kind of explanation of its own. These are people in flight from their humanity. If there were a reason for that flight, they would presumably have failed at it.
There is something admirable about this purity, just as there is something (presumably) still pleasurable about the sex acts Brandon engages in with himself, with multiple women, and with at least one man in the course of the film, though in neither case are these things gratifying to a viewer with more than an aesthetic interest in the movie. The best bit of the film is when Miss Mulligan, revealing a hitherto undiscovered talent, sings Kander and Ebb’s pop anthem “New York, New York” from the Scorsese film as a meditative, piano-accompanied ballad, and we see a single tear running down Brandon’s cheek. Mr. McQueen gives us the whole song, too, and not just the payoff, rather as earlier he had eschewed the usual cinematic coyness (which he mostly sticks to in the sex scenes) while depicting her in the shower. It’s a brave and even slightly shocking defiance of cinematic convention and audience expectation, but it is a defiance, like the truncated narrative, only for its own sake. You have to like movies too much to like this movie or even, I would say, to consider it worth seeing.
About the Author
James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
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Timothy L. Pennell| 12.19.11 @ 6:06AM
Apparently, the News of the day, is not enough for Mr. Bowman. He's now doing Movie Revues for ALAN.
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.19.11 @ 10:29AM
Hmmm. It's 10 a.m. I commented at 6:06. That means it's been 4 HOURS since anyone's even looked at this riveting piece of phone it in.
Seeing how it's Christmas time, and, for all I know, Johnny Bowman is eating from a Dog Food can, and needs this job, I'm gonna help him out.
JackinWI: You wouldn't have all these SEX Movies, if it wasn't for all those Jews in Hollywood. I wanna tell ya, there's nothing more sexually perverted, than one of those Zionist Filth Dealers. It's all over the place. I know what I'm talking about. Every Time I'm in a Porn Shop, looking through one of the Peep Holes in the Booth, I see a JEW, looking right back at me. Damn Jews.
Alan Brooks: Sex Addiction is a tricky subject. me and my friends, we call it, Sex Adicktion, for obvious reasons. I don't think that it's really a bad thing, as long as you like what you're doing.
I like it when I'm in a Booth, and I look through the Peep Hole. The only bad experience i have, doing that, is when I look through the hole, and there's this other guy, looking back at me, and calling me a Jew.
Other than that? It's all good.
REPLY TO THIS
ALAN BROOKS: Sometimes when I'm shopping for Plastic Bananas and Cucumbers, I think how funny it would be if I had a Dog, and I was gonna say something about something. I forget. Ooooh, Coconuts. They look just like big hairy........................
REPLY TO THIS
Alan Brooks: I remember now. I was gonna say that I Mispelled the word "Mispelled" the other Day. Oh pooh. I mispealed it, again!
JackinWi: That was you, Alan? Sometimes, when I'm reading Ron Paul's Newsletter, I forget that a lot of people are Circumcised. I gotta remember that, next time. maybe Ron Paul can put an end to these Zionist Circumcisions, and we can go back to being AMERICANS?
Merry Christmas, Johnny Bowman.
You owe me.
SeymourGlass| 12.19.11 @ 2:26PM
Wow. Are you still giggling?
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.19.11 @ 6:20PM
I am.
SeymourGlass| 12.19.11 @ 6:46PM
As they say, those who are easily amused are happiest.
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.20.11 @ 6:02AM
As a Pig in sh*t.
As my dear Grandmother used to say. GOD rest her soul.
Tiddly| 12.19.11 @ 3:00PM
You need a life outside this forum.
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.19.11 @ 6:18PM
That's it? That's all you got?
Pathetic,
Bob Grant| 12.19.11 @ 3:55PM
Clint: You RINO/CINO's hating on a movie about an important topic like sex addiction is sick.
The Keokuck Penny Saver Poll has Ron Paul up by 5 over RINO Newt and CINO Romney.
The Tea Party Rebellion is here.
The Big E| 12.19.11 @ 5:35PM
You forgot to capitalize the first letter in each word of your first sentence. Otherwise, are you sure you're not Clint in disguise?
Gary| 12.19.11 @ 10:30AM
Why, why, would one want to watch such a depressing film? It seems the "artiste" film makers believe that we must wallow in the basest of human depravity to make a critically acclaimed film. I realize all films can't be "A Wonderful Life" but give me a break, this is too much! At least a real porn film makes no pretense as to its' purpose. Where is Russ Meyer when we need him?
Al Adab| 12.19.11 @ 2:57PM
Since the term "addiction" has been co-opted to cover any number of issues relating to lack of self-control and self-discipline it might do us as a society well to remember that temptation is aomething to avoid not something to seek out. True addicition is a medical condition not simply an excuse for self indulgence.
Margie| 12.19.11 @ 8:30PM
As usual I cannot resist (because of my Biblical addiction) quoting of God's Word concerning temptation, as your comment brings it to mind:
"Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren." Jas. 1:13-16.
There it is in a nutshell. we're tempted by our own desires, sinners that we are in our bodies of death, and yet God promises to make a way of escape, and He is faithful:
"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." 1 Cor. 10:13.
And all we have to do is repent, and believe in the Gospel of God.
Well said, Al.
Tiddly| 12.19.11 @ 3:03PM
This article reminds me of all the crap written about "contemporary" or "modern" art. Anyone with a brain can see that there's nothing to this "art" and that it's only sustained by the prattle of supposed intellectuals.
This movie is nothing but pornography disguised as "modern art."
And the Steve McQueen that this article mentions reminds me of a much better one, an actor in real movies.
Bob Grant| 12.19.11 @ 3:49PM
What a waste of time watching a movie about some guy who can't keep it in his pants. And to think it would cost me $20-$30 (parking, concessions, inc.) x (2) for such a privilege.
Look it, we've got more pressing issues to deal with like the disastrous republican primary unfolding before our eyes.
albert constantine jr| 12.19.11 @ 10:12PM
Didn't 43 % of the electorate vote for such a guy in 1992 (and 49% re-elect him in 1996)?
POST American| 12.19.11 @ 10:58PM
---------------------FINAL WORD-----------------------
"ALLLLL culture, and I mean ALL, is created,
funded, engineered and authorized by those
above. And as society degrades itself, we
think we invented it, and have no idea we're
just living a program. Of course the media
will NOT tell you this. Understand, they too
are 'authorized' and are there to 'promote'
the changes and make people think it was
all inevitable, and 'just happened' -or was
from oourselves."
CUT TO THE CHASE---
Psychopathic, pyramid USURY's ultimate spiritual tool?
------------------'NILE---ism' of course.