AROUSED, BUT NOT JOYOUSLY: MICHAEL FASSBENDER PLAYS A SEX ADDICT IN “SHAME” by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
Left: Mr. Fassbender
It goes without saying that
any movie is bound to be similar to and completely different from what you
imagine. But I can't say that that is true of "Shame.” Recalling its images of smooth loneliness and
pulsating sex, I can't remember what I expected. I knew the film was about sex
addiction and therefore probably isolation as well, but I didn't picture the
consequences of that addiction being so gruesome.
But if
the movie is disturbing, it is also winning in its visual expressiveness and
perceptiveness. As the picture begins, director Steve McQueen (who wrote the screenplay
with Abi Morgan) announces his pressence with tremendous flair. He gives us a
shot of Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender), lying on a bed of gray sheets,
which turn stark white after he has left the bed and opened the curtains,
leaving the screen free for the film's title to be unvailed. This terrific shot
seems to be both Mr. McQueen's way of wooing the audience with his artistry,
but also a perfect summation of what the movie is about--dark habits being
tugged unwillingly into daylight.
Those
habits belong to Brandon and they include (but are not limited to) watching
porn at work and home and spending the money he makes at his boring-looking
office job on prostitutes. It doesn't look like much fun, but he can't or won't
stop doing it. "Slowly," he tells a hooker as she pulls off her
shirt.
Anyone
who has seen Mr. Fassbender is "X-Men: First Class" or (god forbid)
"Jane Eyre" knows that his greatest weapon is his voice. That's not
much use to him here, because Brandon locks himself out of his own existence.
In one scene where he meets a co-worker at a posh restaurant, he is rendered
awkward by the fact that he can't talk about himself, other than the fact that
he doesn't believe in "being with one person for the rest of your
life". He keeps his friends and family locked outside of his white
apartment door, both so he can continue having attachment free sex and because
he has attachment free sex.
The
one person he can't keep out is his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), who we
first meet when he finds her using his shower. In this early moment, she is
flippant and scared, before quickly transitioning into to teasing Brandon the
next morning while guzzling orange juice from a carton.
That
night, however, is different. Brandon goes to see her singing at a bar, in what
amounts to the film's most tedious sequence. She performs an excessively slow
rendition of "New York, New York", dragging out every syllable. The
camera remains fixed on her until we see something more interesting--Brandon's
reaction. He's crying.
Not
that Sissy ever finds out. Brandon won't let her even talk to him much and once
she moves in, he's eager to get her out. "You're a burden," he says
in Mr. Fassbender's controlled, furious tone. "You tie me down." Of
course what he's really saying is, "You're too close to me and I can't
allow that."
It's
hard to say why Brandon really doesn't want Sissy in his life. Is it because he
doesn't want her to know about his addiction? Is he just afraid of connection?
Or is he maybe even afraid of his own sexual feelings for her? There's enough
to hint at that possibility, but not to confirm it.
There
is really only one thing that Mr. McQueen will confirm--that Brandon is an
addict. His whole existence seems based
on doing things nonstop--riding the subway while tunnel lights endlessly flash
by, or jogging through Manhattan, while Sean Bobbit's camera sleekly tracks him
seamlessly from the shadows of shutdown buildings to streets alive with
headlights.
Those
images are pleasantly poetic. Not so for the movie's vicious climax. Undone by
Sissy's efforts to get nearer to him, Brandon goes nearly mad. He bops from
bars to sex clubs and finally to an apartment where two women are waiting for
them. The three of them have sex bathed in a golden light reminiscent of the
kind used for the lovemaking scene in "The Illusionist", but this
moment is not about the meeting of two lovers--it's about throbbing madness,
about a man who has finally dipped over the edge of his own reality. As bodies
pulse violently up and down, we see every bit of Mr. Fassbender's face, teeth
exposed, eyes wide and alive. The emotion he generates seems almost like joy in
its wavelike explosiveness, but it's too violent and angry to be called that.
It's more like the excitement of a murderer relishing a crime, while Sissy
cries out on the phone.
"Shame"
is not the only 2011 movie to wallow in its hero's destructive
obsessions--"The Tree of Life" and "Drive" did much the
same. It's true that there is something self-indulgent about films that
poetically milk emotional darkness for dramatic value. But Mr. McQueen is
clearly too conscientious to let us relish Brandon's addiction. In the end, he
pays for what he's done--and no, not by getting an STD (per the tradition
established other sex-centric films like "The Dreamers", this film
sweeps physical consequences under the rug in favor of emotional ones). Instead
his actions cause a mutilation, one he can almost feel coming before it
happens. By the time he's clutching a body splattered with blood like a mannequin,
you don't need to tell him to repent.
In the
end, it is hard to tell if Brandon has been battered enough to never go where
he's been going again, but you know that you never will.
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