Steve McQueen’s “Shame” is an dive into the never ending depths of sadness and destruction. The film provides an explicit account of a troubled sex addict, played with a hollow, numbing ferocity by Michael Fassbender.
Despite the wrenching world created on screen, McQueen’s unapologetic foray into the dark crevasses of human nature is a terrific movie. It is not uplifting, enjoyable or redemptive, all conditions that many people would expect from a superlative cinematic experience. What it manages to be, however, is almost staggeringly human, and unapologetically so.
Shame makes into a lie the universal assumption in movies that orgasms provide a pleasure to be pursued. The film’s opening shot shows Brandon awake in the morning, staring immobile into space. He could be a man prepared to commit suicide. He gets out of bed, goes into the shower and masturbates. It will be the first of his many orgasms, solitary and with company, that day. He never reveals emotion. He lives like a man compelled to follow an inevitable course.
He is cold to people. To prostitutes, to co-workers, to strangers. His shame is masked in privacy.
Brandon lives in a cold, forlorn Manhattan. When he is in a group, he is alone. The sidewalks seem unusually empty. He loves no one, is attracted to no one, is driven to find occasions for orgasm — whether alone or in company hardly seems to matter.
Shame is a memorably caustic film steeped in melancholy. It’s humanity at a low point, but when it comes to the art of film, it is an experience that resonates at the highest level.
