Thoughts On "Shame"
Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 2:22PM 
Other things to read about "Shame" today...
Aint it Cool has a review which spends one whole paragraph on the "magnificence" of Fassbender's cock (from a straight man -lol) and contains a funny smackdown of the MPAA.
MUBI Ignatiy doesn't much care fo Shame's vagueness about the details.
In Contention lets us know that it won't be eligible for the WGA Screenplay prizes.
Next Movie, in honor of Fassy, looks at the best penis moments in movies.
P.S. I've written so piecemeal about Shame -- see past posts -- that it's amounted to all of these brief bits without one big substantial review. I'm realizing that this is my habit in general, the dangers of blogging daily with ADD I suppose. I feel I need to build Frankenstein monster parts of all my brief impressions of any given movie into a series of hulking reanimated pieces. Now to wait for the right stormy opportunity and the bolt of inspirational lightning.
P.P.S. Here's the French poster, airbrushing and shining up one of the film's most haunting images. It's like a motion capture animated version of Shame. Imagine it. Hee.
Are you seeing Shame this weekend? If you've already see it, what did you make of it?
Oscars (11), Reviews, Shame, Towleroad
Reader Comments (16)
I saw it at the NYFF and was very, very disappointed. Despite McQueen's obvious skills (which were on display in Hunger), Shame is vacuous. It has multiple problems--protracted and unearned "poignant" moments, on-the-nose affectations masquerading as inspired details, and a trite exploration of the centralized psychology.
I was also vexed by the "authentic" depiction of NYC; I find it to be a terribly obvious stab at an outsider looking in--which is a problem since McQueen tries to make NYC the third lead and fails. Then again, none of the characters/ciphers are very well thought through.
Obviously, since I don't find the film very psychologically probing, I'm a bit disappointed that this moralistic slice-of-dressed-up-tragedy is becoming the film that is using its NC-17 rating as a stamp of artistic legitimacy. It's a subject I feel strong about (candid sexuality in cinema--the good and the bad), and I want Shame to earn its current status as NC-17 breakthrough, but it does not. McQueen is quite the artist, and he can aestheticize even the ugliest ideas to near compelling beauty, but he is unable to dig beneath his surface of clever composition and glossy lighting. Fassbender's boss, as well as his would-be coworker lover--all these dilemmas become brutally transparent and simplistic; they're just mere winks. Oddly enough--the film is simply a pretty thing with a vacuous, transparently flawed core--the exact same problem that the film pressures its protagonist to confront. This leaves us hanging in all the moments we're supposed to be devastated by Fassbender (of whom I'm typically a massive fan) staring into the distance after doing something sexually aberrant--the tracking shot remains still, but the emotional payoff is not there.
Shame is hardly challenging or complex--as long as you're patient enough to sit through a 4 minute tracking shot, the film has all its cards facing up on the table. And those cards are not aces.
Just came from seeing it. It got a little too ponderous at times but overall it was compelling and tastefully done. I'd rank it as my fourth or fifth favorite film of the year.
Nice comment Nick McC.! wrote as much as nathaniel,haha. I always see the same reciew of this movie, everybody has the same thoughts on it, atleast thats what it seems to me so it's a little refreshing to see a thought about the film that's completely opposite. Im interested in the film but your criticisms sounds like things that i'd have a problem with. i feel like i know where your coming from about the film and i havent even seen it! still, im sure ill like it. i have no expectations,mainly cause im not gonnaa be able to see for such.a.long.time.
I saw it at TIFF as well, respected it and didn't love it like some of the bloggers who saw it there. Perhaps this subject matter is hardly explored in mainstream American cinema that may explain the early enthusiasm.
Then I watched it again last month at my local festival and had the same problem that Nick McC. had with the film. It was kind of disappointing when I start to pay more attention to some of the details. Perhaps it was the NC-17 narrative Searchlight was pushing for the Oscars I felt more disconnected watching it again. McQueen is a fantastic visual director, and Fassbender and Mulligan are fantastic and brave actors.
In the end, I think it's more of a performance piece.
Astonishing. Brilliantly executed and paced, with incredible acting all around. Fassbender's internal war was like watching the flip side of Gosling's silent Driver. And how Mulligan, in her best performance to date, is not getting more attention for Oscar is beyond me. She should be nominated for 'New York, New York' alone. I've never seen self-destructive behavior onscreen so aware and so desperate to change.
I loved the performances from both Fassbender and Mulligan, but I have to agree with Bret Easton Ellis's comment about the film, that it "would have been so much more disturbing if Brandon had actually enjoyed the sex". The pain and misery of these characters were a bit too accessible, it didn't give the audience much space to dig for themselves.
it "would have been so much more disturbing if Brandon had actually enjoyed the sex"
And It would have been another movie, with another title. Addicted people (people who are aware of their addiction) are not happy or satisfied during or after their compulsive acts. There's no satisfaction. There 's no joy. Director, screenwriter and actos know very well what they're talking about. Believe me: very well.
I am seriously crazy about the WAFCA Award nominations! A near-perfect balance between the obvious Oscar choices and the work that film snobs most appreciate.
Nick -- compelling comment. I understand these objections but I guess I bristle at people bitching about Steve McQueen's superb technique and preference for long long tracking shots. He's one of the only people doing it that are using it for compelling emotional material instead of just, well, arthouse fussiness and patience testing unless you're already obsessed with the auteur who is doing it.
also: so few filmmakers are willing to touch sex with a ten foot pole that I'm super appreciative that someone as skilled as McQueen is going there. Sex is still somehow the great taboo of cinema which is ahilarious given that people like to complain that there's so much sex in movies. Or at least they use to complain about that.
Ferdi -- what you said. I find that with most addiction dramas that get this criticism, we're dealing with a problem of time frame. Like drugs for example. Generally people enjoy drugs at first and but once the addiction is there it's hardly fun for people. it's desperation and need.
Ferdi - What Bret Easton Ellis meant was not that sex addicts are (and should be) happy/ satisfied with their addiction, but they shouldn't be so obviously self-aware and self-reflective about their problems as the filmmakers suggested in the film.
BTW, are you a secret hater of the film? In the last two sentences of your comments, you seem to suggest that the director, screenwriter and actors are all sex addicts ;)
I go back and forth between thinking that Shame is some kind of masterpiece and believing that it's just a very well engineered hype monster - edgy and boundary pushing in its sexual content, but not so alienating on a story level (it's basically the exact same movie as The Lost Weekend, just with Fassbender's cock in place of a bottle of hooch) as to drive away a more middle brow audience - including critics - who can compliment themselves on submitting to the experience but still come away unchallenged. Because I do think that Shame is a fundamentally unchallenging film, or can be, unflinchingly awful as Brandon's life appears to be. There's a remoteness in the film's form that is both born of the character, and therefore organic to the film - while being simultaneously calculated - and imposed onto the film - so as to position Brandon as the Other, remote from the audience, and unknowable in basic ways. That's a way of insulating the audience from the experience its having. I don't know if that is the goal, though, an accidental side effect, or something else. And I haven't really reconciled whether this means the film is working at cross purposes to itself, or if there's another level to it all that I wasn't able to fully detect in one viewing, or what. Whatever it's flaws, though, it's clearly a significant, major work, with four or five sequences at least that rank among the year's very best.
I loved this film, but I still had a few problems with it.
I personally was not as taken with Carey Mulligan's performance. She did do a good job of being so needy because, like Brandon, she really annoyed me at times. But every time she got emotional in the film her british accent would come out and it always took me out of the film. I couldn't get over it. Also, I didn't always like the score of the film because I thought it didn't always match the tone of a scene. But in the grande scheme of things, I thought that the movie was great, and I LOVED the tracking shot.
To Nick McC.:
In an interview with Steve McQueen posted on the A.V. Club, he states that he "had no intention of making a New York film." I can, however, completely see how it would seem like NYC was a character in the film. But, intentional or not I don't feel like it was a failure. I felt like the city was a great backdrop to the film, it was there just enough but not too much. Lastly, I feel like the perceptions and implications of an NC-17 rating is something that both the film's marketing and audience have to get over. If I'd seen this film in mexico, or simply any other country, the rating's system would be different and should we let that change our opinion of the film because instead of being stamped NC-17, it has a B-15, C, or D?
I've seen it twice and I think it's the best movie I've seen in at least 5 years. Adult filmmaking at its best. It might be perceived as "hype seeker" from people who are not familiar with Steve McQueen. To me the idea of talented Steve seeking puriginous hype to market his film is simply hilarious. I understand it's not a movie for all taste, but in much criticism (not on this website) I see people understanding *nothing* of the film, LOL.
Well, if you haven't seen Shame, watch it and talk about it with other film buffs
Buttercup: "BTW, are you a secret hater of the film? In the last two sentences of your comments, you seem to suggest that the director, screenwriter and actors are all sex addicts"
Not at all. I wasn' suggesting that. I was thinking - maybe - about myself. I know very well what they're talking about. The movie is so true, uncomfortable and deeply realistic. I loved it.
So when are we getting the prequel set in Ireland? Some scary shit must have happened up in there to create these two characters.
Don't talk like you know about addiction, especially sex addiction, if you've never been near it or affected by it. Going to film school doesn't make you an expert on everything.