Cinema Notes: Shame

With Shame, writer/director Steve McQueen has attained the dream of perfect reception. His film leveled me. I left the cinema with nail marks in my palms and a tempest in my stomach. This is a film of sophisticated and intelligent observation about a man (Michael Fassbender) lost in the revolving agony of addiction, in this case sexual. Fassbender, in a raw nerve performance, plays the character of Brandon like a man born without a crucial sense, his addiction used to quiet his debilitating self-loathing and unassuageable emptiness. McQueen is a filmmaker of acute economy and he surrounds Fassbender’s performance with controlled and confident compositions. Everything, from the set design to the anticipatory score, seems perfectly placed to aid and define Fassbender’s performance. Shame is one of those perfect confluences of director and actor, like Taxi Driver or McQueen and Fassbender’s first film together, Hunger.

Note: Shame was strapped with an NC-17, a rating that, while not quite the albatross it once was, still seriously limits exposure. The film does contain graphic sexual depictions, but they are emotionally driven. There is not a frame of pornography in the film. Daring works of cinema like Shame should be celebrated, not quarantined. Make an effort to see this one in the cinema.