Falling Down.....
Michael Fassenbender Brandon
Carey Mulligan Sissy
Written and Directed By Steve McQueen
I'm going to temper the enthusiasm for writer director Steve McQueen's addiction drama "Shame." It's a GOOD film but not a GREAT film. Let me try and paint you a picture so you know where I'm coming from here. Like some indie films, Shame suffers from a case of ham handed symbolism for starters. See Brandon (Michael Fassenbender) wake up ala lady Godiva. Hear a voice on the answering machine begging for a connection. See Brandon erase the message. I'm fine with symbolism but it gets a bit heavy handed after this sequence is repeated at least ten times during the first fifteen minutes of the film. I haven't seen Michael Fassenbender and Steve McQueen in their first film together, "Hunger," but I hope that that film isn't as ham handed as Shame is at certain intervals. Someone argued that one of my indie darlings, Darren Aronofsky is guilt of the very same symbolism overkill that I'm taking writer director Steve McQueen to task for. I'm guilty, to a point. Aronofskys' symbolism can be heavy handed but it never becomes an all out assault on the IQ of the film goer. There is a sequence where Brandons' sister Cissy, (Carey Mulligan) a singer by trade, is framed in an extended close up while performing on stage in front of her brother, Brandon. This is another example of what I'm talking about with the ham handed symbolism here. The context of the sequence is established rather quickly. You can pretty much tell what the sequence represents when Cissy belts out the first line. If McQueen is going to join the elite writer directors club, he needs to trust his audience a bit more.
What Shame also loses points for is a plot point involving the oblivious best pal who has to wear blinders for the plot to work its way forward. In this case, the underwhelming role goes to Brandon's boss and best friend in the film. Naturally, he plays deaf dumb and blind when his friends' work computer comes back from a service scan with pornography all over its hard drive. This being said, there's nothing in Shame that we haven't seen about addiction before. We have the addict who seems in control. We have the addict losing control in the last act. And of course, we have the hellish meltdown. Personally, I think Mike Figgis handled these waters a tad bit better with his film Leaving Las Vegas. In Ben, there's a natural unforced slide towards oblivion. When Brandon has his free fall, it feels like a plot point being ticked off on the old screenplay checklist. Perhaps it's because writer director Steve McQueen spends so much time hammering home the fact that Brandon is not what he appears to be; that his sense of control is merely an illusion that will be exposed in due time. Let's face it, Brandons' fate is rather transparent in some respects.
Plot: Brandon (Michael Fassenbender) is a seemingly normal up scale New Yorker. He has the killer place, the nice job. But looking beneath the surface, Brandon is a sex addict who is incapable of intimacy and or emotional connection. Brandon masks his compulsions as he best he can but eventually they hit the surface of his seemingly ideal life in a rather alarming way. Complicating matters is the appearance of Brandons' sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan.) She is everything that Brandon isn't. That is to say, comfortable with her sexuality almost to a fault. Brandon doesn't really want her around but he reluctantly agrees to take her in when she has no place to go. I'll stop there, you can decipher the rest of the plot on your own
Don't get me wrong, Shame does a lot of things well. I thought that the ambiguousness of the ending was refreshing. Instead of answering the ultimate question about Brandon's fate, writer director Steve McQueen allows us to fill in the blanks for ourselves. To assign a set ending to this film would be a cheat, in light of the fact that this film is about an addict. With addiction, there are no promises and no guarantees. With this in mind, the last sequence in the film is
both simple and poignant.
I actually saw Shame a second time. I wanted to see if an additional viewing could change my mind regarding Michael Fassenbenders front runner status for the best actor statue. My feelings are still the same. George Clooney has the more difficult role in The Descendants and it's his Oscar to win. Fassenbender turns in good work as the doomed addict but the Brandon role doesn't seem all that complex. Clooney has to shift gears many times and he has to make sure that his character, disconnected as he is, relates to the audience. To me, Fassenbender's performance seems like merely like a one noter. Ask yourself this. If Fassenbender misses the mark, does Shame suffer all that much? No, because it's a material driven film. Fassenbenders' performance is mere gravy, in my view. Shame can survive without him. I'm going three stars here, four would be a stretch. The opening act is slow and peppered with filler. IE, a rather un necessarily comic sequence involving an over eager waiter. To writer director Steve McQueen, I say again.; say what needs to be said and move on. Still, Shame shows signs of life when the best friend/boss character is ditched. When Brandon and Cissy are left to their own devices without that extraneous plot point involving Brandons' pal and boss, the film becomes almost everything that I thought it would be. During the middle acts of the film, we are treated to a fascinating character snapshot of both Cissy and Brandon. It's amazing to discover how two siblings can be such opposites. This, in spite of the fact that their pain, though manifested differently, virtually comes from the same place. It's to bad that the first act ruins everything That and the symbolism issue that I've referenced more than a few times. To me, the frantic phone calls from Cissy aren't needed to set up the point where Brandon finally hits bottom. McQueen has that already, in the hotel room. That shot of Brandons' face tells you all need to know.be
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