Almost There: Michael Fassbender in "Shame"
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 at 1:30PM 
With the films of Steve McQueen's anthology, Small Axe, earning critical raves as they traverse through the festival circuit, it's a good time to remember some of his previous projects. While 12 Years a Slave was a great success that conquered acclaim and many awards, the rest of the director's filmography has been more polarizing and arguably underrated. It feels wrong, for instance, that his recurring muse, Michael Fassbender, got the first of two Oscar nominations for his least impressive contribution to McQueen's oeuvre. He was much more deserving two years before that best Picture winner, in 2011's Shame...
Shame is a character study about tormented souls, people that aren't bad though they come from bad places. The hero of this woeful tale is Brandon Sullivan, a mid-level executive living in Manhattan whose entire existence is defined by a constant pursuit of sexual gratification. He's an addict, and orgasms are like shots of dope, nothing more. Brandon's past the point where pleasure could overwhelm him or produce euphoria. All that's left is the abatement of pain, the reprieve from the insatiable hunger that threatens to consume him whole, from the inside out.
The sex may come in great quantities, but it's never fulfilling, never enough. Day-to-day existence is hazy, a waking dream of a half-lived life. Brandon floats through the world, insouciant and immaterial, like steam vomited from the underground into the cold Manhattan streets. The desolation of the city at night is Brandon's home, the savannah that he prowls in search of new prey, but it's also the noose that tightens around his neck. One feels he'd welcome the suffocation if only to feel something, anything. Fittingly, the audience of Shame is also made to feel the kiss of asphyxiation, the sorrowful mood smothering.
McQueen's story of addiction and self-hatred is a punishing watch, even if masterfully crafted. Upon its release, there was much controversy about the plentiful nudity and sex scenes, but, like most films with graphic carnality, Shame is profoundly unerotic. It's almost rancid in its avoidance of titillation, making sex look as ugly and unappealing as it's ever looked on screen. The result is a rather sex-negative picture, even if Brandon is such a specific case that drawing generalizations from his pathology feels uniquely wrong.
It's crucial to understand how McQueen's camera captures and molds the performance of Michael Fassbender as Brandon. The nakedness of the actor, for instance, is shot and performed with such casual disaffection, it becomes disturbing. McQueen's compositions, when paired with the minimalistic apartment set, create a sense of clinical observation that rubs off against the sexual body in uncomfortable ways. The framing also doubles down on the punishing alienation that Brandon suffers. He's often pushed to the corners of the image, crushed by large swaths of empty space, unable to be at the center of his own story.
The film thus hinges on Fassbender's shifting expressions and meaningful postures, his silences, and pointed looks. Shame's not so much a showcase as the vivisection of the man in front of the camera. Fassbender's work is the kind of performance that can only exist when there's a lot of trust between actor and director, a willingness to let a character emerge from the symbiosis between performance and form. The early montage, which intersects a sexually-charged subway trip with Brandon's mind-numbing routine, immediately defines the essence of the man and why he's as repulsive as he's scary, both worthy of our pity and our disgust.
In the underground train, Fassbender's face goes from stone-cold provocation to something more carnivorous, dangerous. A sculpture of stern horniness mutates into a shark sniffing blood, a powerful animal chasing its prey through the crowd. It's all in Fassbender's growingly eager eyes and the way the camera movement reflects the energy building up inside the addict looking for a fix. There's also the matter of repeated gesture, of mundanity that's built from a vicious cycle of need.
Brandon's life is designed by patterns of behavior, waves of an addict's desire that crash over him. Any attempt to contradict the tide is useless, as Brandon's body starts betraying his will. First, his tongue slips into words of foul truth. Then it's his genitals that fail to perform. There's no expositive dialogue informing us of this. All the internal savagery of bruised feeling and untreated mental malady blossoms from Fassbender and the camera, two partners dancing in tandem.
Well, it blossoms from that dance as well as the secondary choreographies the actor performs with his scene partners. Despite having a small cast, Shame has one miraculously perfect ensemble. First up, we have James Badge Dale as Brandon's smarmy superior, a figure of cocky machismo that represents the kind of man our protagonist pretends to be. Along with his bespoke suits and tight white t-shirts, Brandon wears a convincing mask of cocky masculinity molded after people like his co-worker. Of course, when compared to Dale's real-deal cockiness, Fassbender's "normal person" façade has cracks that become ever more evident as the film progresses.
The fissures manifest in Brandon's febrile fragility, he who looks as if he's half a step from a panic attack at any given moment. It's in the tension of the body and the non-committal nature of his facial expressions, a faulty machine working on autopilot. In that sense, there's a fascinating challenge to Fassbender's work in Shame. He must play games of seduction and other actions associated with on-screen passion and male confidence but do it with no feeling, just an overwhelming emptiness. By performing it so impeccably, he illuminates Brandon's weakness and how much the man wants to hide that weakness.
If the interactions with James Badge Dale make these dynamics noticeable through direct comparison, his scenes with Nicole Beharie's Marianne illuminate Brandon's inner storm by assuaging it for some precious, fleeting, moments. Fassbender and Beharie have great chemistry, and McQueen makes it all the more evident by staging their date in two long takes. Brandon's mechanic rhythms are disrupted, his hollow charm and gaunt smiles gaining a spark of genuine excitement. He likes Marianne, and she likes him, his nervous awkwardness and odd charm. Walking her to the subway, Brandon allows himself to be weird, he barks and keeps stealing looks at her when she's not paying attention, bursting with an adolescent-like giddiness.
The scene's such a lovely breath of fresh air that we know, from the start, it's all going to end badly. Brandon is always running, running away from himself, from his feelings, from the reality of what he is and what he has become. When someone like Marianne makes him stop running, entices him to be at peace, his tentative control comes tumbling down. Suddenly, this man defined by sex can't get it up, his feelings clogging his virility. Throughout his laborious routine of constant fucking, he might be ashamed of himself, but the shame also turns him on. When there's no reason to be ashamed of sex, he's plunged into another kind of shame, one that's impotent.
And then there's Carey Mulligan's Sissy. As Brandon's wreck of a sister, Mulligan's an explosion while Fassbender's an implosion. She's also an ugly reflection of the man's true self. The siblings are more similar than they look at first. Superficially, they're near antonyms, but a closer look finds synonymous spirits caught in spirals of self-destruction. Whatever they've lived through in the past has connected them and trapped them, forever bound by the scar tissue of shared trauma. The actors sell the abrasive dynamic of warring siblings while also showing the power they have over each other. For all his bravado and outward aggression, Brandon's afraid of Sissy.
Notice, for example, how he cries while listening to her narcotized version of New York, New York. She's the only one that can affect him so deeply. Later on, during a heated argument, a pause after Sissy says the word sex and suggests she knows how dysfunctional Brandon is, functions like the pin needle that pierces the balloon of his perilous mental stability. After that, he unravels and, like the film's score, Fassbender's performance turns into a crescendo of naked despair. It all builds up to the moment when Brandon allows himself the privilege to feel all the pain he has inside. When he does, it's both glorious and heinous, a supernova of incandescent hurt. It's overwhelming to see, almost stinging.
Awards-wise, Fassbender's tour de force earned him quite a lot of honors. The actor was nominated at the Globes, BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, and a great number of critical prizes. He won the Volpi Cup from the Venice Film Festival, as well as the British Independent Film Award, even though he was competing against one of the actors that would eventually score an Oscar nomination instead of him – Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The other members of AMPAS' golden quintet were Jean Dujardin in The Artist, Brad Pitt in Moneyball, Demián Bichir in A Better Life, and George Clooney in The Descendants. Fassbender outperforms them all as far as I'm concerned.
Shame is available to stream on HBO Max.
Reader Comments (27)
I will never forget the moment I knew he wasn't getting nominated. I was at an Oscar party and ended up seated by a bunch of older men. When SHAME came up all they could talk about was the size of Fassbender's penis. It's clear that people weren't seeing the size of the performance itself. Pity.
You can see this even in George Clooney's acceptance speech at the Globes!
He’s my winner in 2011 for this - a great article about a superlative performance.
Shout outs to Beharie (who I nominate) and Mulligan (who makes my Top 10) for some excellent Supporting work too...
Some days, 12 Years A Slave is my least favourite McQueen picture - which in itself speaks volumes about the ridiculously high bar he has set for himself - he’s up there with Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold as modern British masters of film...
Fassbender was easily my favourite actor working at the beginning of the 2010's but then something happened where he just started to produce awful films and even though I went to see all them I wasn't enjoying the experience of seeing Michael barely try.
I hope some day he can return to work with McQueen because the two together made such great films and those films easily feature the best work of either of their careers.
McQueen as a film maker even with the success that came with 12YAS is underrated my mainstream audiences and as far as I'm considered has made four perfect feature films. I look forward to his upcoming Small Axe series as all I've heard is incredible.
Beautiful write-up, even if I don't agree with it. I found Fassbender's performance incomplete and even bland at times. For me it proved that, aside from Anthony Hopkins, male actors find it much harder to play repression as rivetingly as female actors often do.
BVR I second that,I think the blandness was the point,he was a shell,I just didn't buy into most of it,I personally though Carey Mulligan offered a more honest natural portrail of a lost soul.
This write up has as usual made me want to revisit the film.
At least we didn't get DiCaprio for J.Edgar.
Not a fan - a big come-down after the excellent HUNGER.
Fassbender is mesmerizing and Mulligan is outstanding!
The score is very good as well
While the film's limitations have become more apparent to me throughout the years, I still enjoy watching it and Fassbender's work still mesmerizes. The whole cast is brilliant, but his lack of a nomination really stings. I liked that Best Actor lineup more than most years', but he was better than all of the nominated performers.
NATHANIEL R -- That's very sad. I do remember being slightly perplexed at the media discourse surrounding the film, including Clooney's Globes speech. Though, I really disliked Clooney's victory so that may have contributed to my vexation.
kermit_the_frog -- I would have nominated both women and this recent re-watch cemented my love for them. My supporting actress list from that year is a bit weird, to be honest, since it includes two instances of double nominees from the same film. Anyway, that's a bit too off-topic, sorry for my blabber. Regarding your comments about British auteurs, I certainly agree that the trio you mention is superlative.
Eoin Daly -- I can't wait to watch the SMALL AXE films.
BVR -- Thanks for the compliment even if you do disagree with the thesis of the article. I suppose you're referring to Hopkins' masterful turn in THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, another performance of repression I love. I think I'd have given him the Oscar in 1993, to be honest.
markgordonuk -- J. EDGAR is one of those films I started watching multiple times, but always stopped before long. It looked horrid and I'm glad DiCaprio didn't get the Oscar nomination. That being said, both he and Armie Hammer are good examples of "Almost There" scenarios, so maybe one day I'll write about them in this series.
Jonathan -- I'm a fan of both. HUNGER is a superior film to SHAME, though. In that, we can agree.
Manuel -- Agree on all counts, though the best parts of the score are "just" recreations of Hans Zimmer's music for THE THIN RED LINE.
Cláudio: I was definitely referring to Hopkins in THE REMAINS OF THE DAY. So happy to hear you love that performance as well. Regarding your article, I do agree with you that Mulligan and Behari are just phenomenal in SHAME — Fassbender's best moments in the film are when he's sharing the screen with either one of them. But you gave me stuff to think about, so now I'm eager to revisit the film and Fassbender's work.
Claudio, great write-up. I'd go as far as to say that Fassbender's performance in SHAME is one of the best pieces of acting ever committed to celluloid. It's other-level acting, ripped from somewhere deeply personal within him. I've never before nor since seen a performance that better illuminates why men think and behave the way they do.
But I also need to defend his astonishing work in 12YAS. He and Sarah Paulson find a multitude of specifics about that marriage, and they make it horrifying to watch the black characters suffer the ups and downs of their sick union. He does an unflinching assay on a man who asserts his confidence and ownership while having no way to understand the rumblings of his own feelings.
I still think he is THE great actor of his generation. When he's firing on all cylinders, there's nobody who can touch him.
Eric -- seconded on both counts. I definitely think he's *the* actor of his generation. and i also think he's completely brilliant in 12 Years a Slave.
He should've won that year and Clooney was right in that acceptance speech. Clooney knew this guy was BIGGER than him and he respected that. Didn't Fassbender win any Miss Skin prizes? Come on, Mr. Skin awards female nudity. There has to be something for Fassbender.
Mixed feelings about this: one of my top five films that year, but of the performers Fassbender has left the faintest lasting impression—Mulligan, Beharrie, Dale all more indelible. Not that I don't love Fassy in this, but I prefer his work in McQueen's Hunger and 12 Years a Slave.
Great write-up, Claudio.
And Eric B - thirded. There's a terrific story that Tom Hardy tells about Fassbender when the both of them were at acting school together. Basically Fassy was the guy they all looked up to...
Shame is one of the most vivid leading man performances of the 2010s, although I think he tops it in Steve Jobs.
He made a few bad choices after 2015, but it seems he just needed a break from acting (apparently he's been racing cars in the downtime). He's the star of Taika Waititi's next movie so that's something to look forward to.
I'll co-sign everything EricB just said; just an unbelievably raw performance, I couldn't picture any of his peers even coming close.
I'm actually surprised to see the mixed reception of his performance in this movie; I always assumed that it was universally acclaimed and held in high regard.
Michael Koresky said it best:
"a top-to-bottom sad sex movie, pushed so far to its limits (and so short on subtext) that it plays and feels almost like a farce."
Is this the same year that Swinton missed out on We Need to Talk About Kevin? I was so disappointed that they both missed out.
I miss him so much. He is such a brilliant actor. Was close to winning for hunger for me, winning for. Shame and Steve Jobs and was close again in 12 years a slave. Also nominated him in fish tank. How on earth could fassy, mulligan and Tilda Swinton not earned oscar nominations is beyond me.
@Jonathan
The subtext is everything related to his and his sister's trauma, all of which is largely unspoken and goes undiscussed in the film.
Looking at his filmography again, most of his choices over the last four to five years make total sense, and besides Assassin's Creed and The Snowman none of them are outright disasters.
Light Between Oceans was a Derek Cianfrance drama, not a bad decision even if the film didn't totally work. He gets a pass on the later/lesser X-men films since those were contractually obligated. And then you have a Malick film and a Ridley Scott-directed follow up to Prometheus.
Don't even get me started. The snub of the decade.
You should write about Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia! :)
Cláudio - I have one set of double nominees in 2011 Supporting Actress - J. Smith-Cameron (my winner) and Jeannie Berlin for Margaret - but yes, too off topic and should be saved for what I’m hoping is your follow-up series “No Traction? REALLY!?”
Besides, he's not that hung.
Have we written about Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy yet?
Curtis C -- She hasn't yet been featured in this series, but I'm bound to get to her one of these days. She clearly was almost there and, in my opinion, should have been nominated.