Shame

This is a tough one – both in subject matter, execution and in trying to discuss it. It does away with many of the usual things that setup a film: specific location, a backstory for the characters, reasoning behind their actions, etc. Instead, what we’re given is a look at a specific moment in the numb, hollow, cold life of one man and his serious addiction. What caused it? We don’t know, but the hints are horrific. What, exactly, is his job? Doesn’t really matter in the end since it’s just the place he goes in-between random sexual encounters and copious amounts of online porn surfing and sex chatting.

Shame left me depressed to my very core. When it ended I wanted to go run and hide in The Artist to cheer myself up before heading back out to the world. Addictions are nasty, destructive things, and here is a film, much like The Lost Weekend, which doesn’t flinch away from the realities and struggles to live on a day-to-day basis with one.

The cold, emotionally distant cinematography and set design, sparse and icy, work wonders to show the hollowed out realities of this man’s life. He isn’t just emotional distant, he’s emotionally incapable of much of anything. When his needy, desperate sister comes buzzing back into his life his veneer begins to crack. While, yes, Steve McQueen’s direction is artful and clean, a master class is economy and holding back when necessary, the performances are what make Shame so emotionally devastating and rich to behold.

Michael Fassbender should have not only been nominated for this year’s Best Actor Oscar, he probably should’ve won the damn thing outright. No one else went into as naked (both literally and emotionally) and dangerous a place as he did. His work, mostly done with his expressive eyes and shark-like mouth, is quiet but haunting. And his teaming with Carey Mulligan, so wonderfully smart and tart in An Education, speaks volumes without using many words. What exactly happened to them as children to leave them so damaged and scarred in such drastically different ways?

The film never outright answers that question, but clues, some subtle, others not so, are offered throughout. Like when Fassbender first realizes that Mulligan has returned for a visit and he finds her in the shower. They have a fairly long conversation while she is standing before him totally nude and dripping wet. That’s not normal brotherly-sisterly behavior. Neither is a scene in which she climbs into bed with him in the middle of the night or the one where he wrestles with her while he’s only wearing a towel. And late in the film she delivers a line that speaks volumes without saying anything specific: “We just come from a bad place.”

After watching this I couldn’t help but wonder why the Academy chose to ignore it in so many categories. This, along with Hugo and Beginners, were a trio of films that I figured would be nominated in practically every major category. Hugo was the lone one to actually prove itself as a major contender. Which is such a pity, because Shame while like a gut-punch is also a beautifully acted, well-written and artistically stylized and directed film that will probably go down as one of the great snubbed films of 2011, maybe even of the decade.