New film: "Shame"
The Economist, Dec 28th 2011, 22:37 by V.B. | LONDON http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/12/new-film-shame
IN A Steve McQueen film every shot, no matter how incidental, feels freighted with significance. In ‘‘Hunger’’ (2008), his break-out feature, this visual seriousness was matched by a bleak subject: IRA prisoners on a hunger strike. We see a lengthy sequence of a guard going through his morning routine, his banal steps fraught with the knowledge that his car could be blown up by Republican paramilitaries at any moment. In ‘‘Shame’’, Mr McQueen’s latest film, Michael Fassbender plays Brandon Sullivan, a handsome, well-paid and psychologically tormented New Yorker. Brandon lives an impeccably stylish life of starred restaurants, minimalist furnishings and an impressive record collection. What mars this picture is Brandon's all-controlling need for sex—empty and relentless—which threatens to destroy him and his shiny existence.
Mr McQueen’s camera moves with the same steady focus as it did in ‘‘Hunger’’. He composes a poetic vision of the city, from grimy subway underpasses to roof-top bars, and sets it against a grandiose soundtrack of Bach and Harry Escott’s swelling, mournful score. Yet the plot and scripting of ‘‘Shame’’ do not live up to the beauty of Mr McQueen’s shots, and certainly do not justify the constant emotive nudging of the background music.
Both Brandon and his more outwardly damaged sister Sissy, played by Carey Mulligan, are ultimately flimsy characters. This flimsiness is masked to some extent by the skill of the two leads. With subtle inflections and a poignant jumble of mannerisms and flinches, Ms Mulligan especially manages to make compelling what is essentially an unremarkable little-girl-lost character. A scene when Sissy waits on a train platform with Brandon, gently teasing and arguing with him, is deft and understated. But ultimately her character is reduced to a cheap shock scene near the end of the film—a move beneath both cast and director.
Unlike the role in "Hunger" of Bobby, an IRA martyr also played by Mr Fassbender, Brandon is never quite made human to the audience. He and Sissy are interesting to watch because they are beautiful, troubled and mysterious. (The only clue of their odd origins is when Sissy whispers, "We’re not bad people...we just come from a bad place.") But beyond this they are undeveloped. The problem is encapsulated in a lengthy scene, filmed in almost a single shot, in which Sissy, a lounge singer, performs a breathy version of ‘New York, New York’ that brings Brandon to tears. The scene is perfectly composed, beautifully shot, finely acted, yet strangely without effect. Perhaps the blurriness of the characters in ‘‘Shame’’ was intended to make them intriguingly cryptic everymen, but in the absence of specifics they simply seem badly drawn.
Both Brandon and his more outwardly damaged sister Sissy, played by Carey Mulligan, are ultimately flimsy characters. This flimsiness is masked to some extent by the skill of the two leads. With subtle inflections and a poignant jumble of mannerisms and flinches, Ms Mulligan especially manages to make compelling what is essentially an unremarkable little-girl-lost character. A scene when Sissy waits on a train platform with Brandon, gently teasing and arguing with him, is deft and understated. But ultimately her character is reduced to a cheap shock scene near the end of the film—a move beneath both cast and director.
Unlike the role in "Hunger" of Bobby, an IRA martyr also played by Mr Fassbender, Brandon is never quite made human to the audience. He and Sissy are interesting to watch because they are beautiful, troubled and mysterious. (The only clue of their odd origins is when Sissy whispers, "We’re not bad people...we just come from a bad place.") But beyond this they are undeveloped. The problem is encapsulated in a lengthy scene, filmed in almost a single shot, in which Sissy, a lounge singer, performs a breathy version of ‘New York, New York’ that brings Brandon to tears. The scene is perfectly composed, beautifully shot, finely acted, yet strangely without effect. Perhaps the blurriness of the characters in ‘‘Shame’’ was intended to make them intriguingly cryptic everymen, but in the absence of specifics they simply seem badly drawn.
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