Shame (2011)

Michael Fassbender's commitment is overwhelming. He must trust his director, implicitly. Good for him. Very rarely we've been exposed to so much sex without an ounce of erotic flavors. Well, that was not the intention, clearly. This is a remarkably serious film about addiction.To make matters even darker I had seen Michael Fassbender as Jung only a few days before. What an actor! Now I feel I'm as familiar with his anatomy as Mrs. Fassbender must be. I must admit the film stayed with me because within its mathematical coldness there is a palpable element of horror. Was it me or Fassbender shows the face of death in one of the many sexual occasions? Chilling really. I will take my chances and recommend it, as long as you don't take your children - I guess you can't NC17 - or your grandparents.

Fmovies: Steve McQueen made a real impact in the film world with his powerful debut Hunger. But like with musicians, there is always the risk that a director's second film will not live up to the high expectations the first effort sets. Yet McQueen has a good go with his dark exploration of human character in Shame.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a successful and well off man living in New York City. He is also a sex addict who constantly picks up women, hires prostitutes, views internet porn daily and masturbates at any given opportunity. It affects his day to day life and he lives a lonely existence. His life is made more complex when his singer sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan), a woman with obvious problems, crashes at his place. She interferes with his life, including sleeping with his boss, David (James Badge Dale) and sets Brandon off to tackle his addiction.

Brandon is depicted as a really despicable character, but he is a man struggling with an addiction. There is a number of sexual scenes throughout Shame, but there is no eroticism as Brandon explores more depraved and disgusting acts and his life spirals out of control. Shame plays as a drug addition movie, similar to Requiem for a Dream as someone struggles to give up something hazardous.

Fassbender offers a powerful performance as a dark, sinister man with strong interplay with Mulligan as he becomes threatening towards her. Compare him to Mulligan, a much more brittle character, on the edge for different reason. She gives a heartbreaking performance as a woman who does not know how to do deal with problems and has a sadness in her eyes. Their scenes were enhanced by McQueen's direction, using hand held cameras to follows Fassbender and the conversations stick to one point, making you feel like you are really watching them in a voyeuristic matter. This makes the movie more tense as the tone changes in an instant.

McQueen employs a grainy filter, giving Shame a dark, grim look which is perfectly fitting considering the atmosphere of the movie. The visuals have a similar feel and tone as other gritty and grim New York set films such as Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy and American Psycho, all of which follow the horrible underbelly of the city. He has shown that he is a great actors' director, but McQueen also had some great visuals, such as a long tracking shot of Brandon jogging and Brandon watching two people having sex in their apartment.

There are many moments in the movie that have little dialogue, relying on Fassbender superb abilities as an actor, particularly key in the beginning and during a long montage of Brandon wandering alone in New York, playing like a scene in the great novel Last Exit to Brooklyn. This is a movie about Brandon's continuing descent and self-sabotage and Fassbender should hopefully gain an Oscar nomination to back up his award buzz in Europe.

Shame continues McQueen's reputation as being one of the best emerging directors around, sticking to his no holds barred, brutal style which keeps a stage play quality to the presentation. Shame is tough, but worthy just for Fassbender's performance and keeps to a tradition of grim New York based film.

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This film instantly drew me in. Fassbender's performance is complex and truly believable.I can honestly say that if you are not haunted by the torment of both Michael Fassbender's and Carey Mulligan's performance, then you are in denial. The pain is apparent, the intrigue of what happened to these siblings is staring you in the face throughout the film. The role's Fassbender has chosen lately have made me an ultimate fan! Another McQueen movie, HUNGER, also stars Fassbender as an Irishman in political protest against the corrupt government of the "80's. I tremendously enjoy watching him on the screen. Michael Fassbender relays raw emotion and true passion to create believable and relatable characters. Im looking forward to future projects.

Shame fmovies. This was not an easy film to watch and even less easy to reflect on. However, I thought it was a great film. Original and brave. The acting was totally convincing and the theme important and challenging. The repeated reminders of the hypocrisy of our society regarding sex and violence were clever and uncomfortable. I was very disappointed, but not surprised, that this film received no recognition at the awards ceremony. Normally, "sex, sells" is written on the heart of all promoters. But not in this case, as it is not at all titillating. A genuinely adult film (not the usual meaning). Fine performances from Michael Fassbinder and Carry Mulligan.

"Shame" centers on Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a lonely, self- alienated man in his thirties who tries his best to appear as your average New Yorker with an office job whenever he finds himself out in public. The trouble with this young man-- or his tragic flaw-- is that whenever he finds a minute of privacy in his day, he hastily delves into his own fabricated reality: a world of excessive sex, pornography, and masturbation. The day Brandon's distressed, disruptive sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) barges into his condo looking for a place to stay until things wind down and her sorrows disappear, his life begins to spiral out of control. He grows increasingly frustrated with her as he feels her invasive presence will bring about the exposure of his deepest and darkest secrets. However, we see that this is just a manifestation of his feelings of intense shame and regret for leading the sad, artificial life he believes is the only one fit for him. Steve McQueen has the sheer audacity to go where very few filmmakers have dared to go before by making a film about sexual addiction and its effects on the human mind. In this ambitious boldness, he doesn't want to hold back on anything and he isn't afraid to show everything, so the result is a film with enough full nudity and explicit sexual content to receive an R-rating in Canada, which would probably translate to an NC- 17 rating in the US, unfortunately. There are several scenes in the film where you literally see every inch of skin on the bodies of the actors (Fassbender is probably the most physically exposed). Having said that, this is never something that comes across as frivolous and it only enhances the film's shock factor as a whole. Michael Fassbender delivers the performance of a lifetime in "Shame", and I currently can't see anyone else winning the Oscar for Best Actor at the upcoming Academy Awards. He seems to understand his sad, lonely character just as well as the screenwriters who gave birth to him (Abi Morgan and Steve McQueen). Brandon is his own worst enemy, for he longs to find solace in someone and discover genuine human affection, but the other side of him remains too caught up in a shameful world detached from real feelings and emotions. There are some scenes in the film where we, the audience, are left alone with nothing but his introspective, subdued presence as he reflects upon his actions in regret. These scenes say more than most movies can say within their entirety. It's thanks to Michael Fassbender's pitch-perfect performance that we can step into his character's shoes and get to feel what he's feeling. They say actions speak more than words; with "Shame", acting speaks more than the inclusion of any sort of narration ever would. Don't worry; I didn't forget about Carey Mulligan! I thought I would highlight her performance separately, too. If I had to say only one thing about it, I would emphasize how amazed I was at seeing her in such an unusual, singular role. She has a tendency to play soft-spoken, prim and proper characters-- but that's not the case with "Shame". She really submerges herself into this disastrous, uncontrollable mess of a young woman who never conceals her deepest feelings to the world-- be it joy or sorrow. There's this one very memorable scene in the film where she sings her own rendition of the jazz standard "New York, New York" in a lounge (she's a singer who does gigs here and there)

Brandon's life is almost perfect: a steady job, a nice apartment, good friends and women adore him. But something prevents Brandon from having a relationship that lasts more than four months, this incapacity is due to the fact that Brandon is a sex addict: to casual encounters with strangers and prostitutes, to pornography (both during and after working hours), to masturbation. And to some extent he seems to have his addiction under control, until her sister Sissy arrives unexpectedly looking for a place to live for a while.

British director Steve McQueen delivers a fascinating character study that explores how modern life (in which new technologies play a major role), increasingly isolates people and makes them unable to establish emotional bonds with others. In Brandon's case, a hunter in search of pleasure and not love, the arrival of his sister will turn him into a prey of his own emotions and will make him face his reality.

One aspect that has caused controversy is the way so raw and explicit to show Brandon's sexual encounters, however this becomes a necessary element, since it is through them that you can see Brandon's need and desperation as Sissy is more involved in his life. Special mention deserves the dynamics established between them, since it is fully nuanced and can even be uncomfortable to witness but is devastatingly emotional (especially in the last minutes of the story).

However, the most important element for the success of the film lies in the performances: in the hands of less committed actors Brandon and Sissy's conflicts would be unconvincing, but McQueen wisely chooses Michael Fassbender (both had previously worked together on Hunger), who literally bares body and soul to take Brandon's emotions to the limit and does it so impressively in a brave and courageous performance (and unfortunately the Academy possibly considered too intense for consideration in their nominations). Meanwhile Carey Mulligan proves to be one of the young actresses with the best prospects and acting range nowadays: her rendition of the classic song New York, New York is an utter delight as well is one of the best scenes in the film.

Shame, in the end (as in most character studies) does not seek to create empathy for the characters, but rather wants us to reflect and ask ourselves how we would react in similar situations.