McQueen More Than satisfies Our Hunger with ‘Shame’
While it’s unsurprising that Turner prize winning video-artist Steve McQueen’s first film, Hunger, bore the marks of his previous career in his use of superbly framed shots, painterly composition and an acute feeling for visceral matter, be it a floor awash with blood or the shit- smeared wall of a prison cell, it is perhaps less expected he would choose the sterile backdrop of corporate America for his follow up. This film is American Psycho-esque in its glossiness but worlds away from that films’ satirical content though both take an unflinching look at damaged psyches and here McQueen treats his hero with the same dignity he afforded hunger- striker Bobby Sands, M.P.
Briefly, this is the tale of high- functioning sex addict Brandon, who successfully holds down a corporate position, is guarded, but possesses sufficient personal charm to seduce without sleaze and lives a solitary existence in a spare but expensive New York apartment. An outsider born in Ireland, uprooted to New Jersey as a teenager, his obsessive sexual behavior initially seems manageable, though a run- in with the company hard-drive threatens to topple the fragile edifice of his respectability at one point, but it is the arrival of Carey Mulligan as sister Cissie that which precipitates the big unraveling. Emotionally she is brothers’ antithesis - promiscuous with her heart as well as her body, where Michael Fassbender’s Brandon is mechanical in his compulsions. Both are superb and, as in Hunger, McQueen employs long takes and static camera, giving fantastic freedom to his actors- they are under the microscope and allowed to (p)lay themselves bare. Without Fassbender (or indeed with non- European actors) it could be a very different film. He is as stunning here as in Hunger or Fish Tank – bit to creepy as Rochester for my taste and far more predatory than in this film, ironically. His face is a mask of pain at the height of his most intense sexual encounter which comes (sorry!) near the climax (and again) of the film.
McQueen hints at destructive filial impulses borne of a shared history, but thankfully this American-set film is utterly European in both its lacerating honesty and open-endedness. My only cavil is some rather on- the- nose dialogue in Abi Morgan’s’ script and a rather melodramatic denouement. In fact, the wordless opening section is so superb I felt rather cheated when the “story” kicked in. But as a filmmaker McQueen is right up there, both in his use of the camera as an emotional scalpel and his visual audacity. This is a film which is both austere and rich, flawed in script but not in tone. The performances are truthful where they could have been seductive and dishonest. The result is both beautiful and deeply moving, leaving us, and Brandon, full- circle but with perhaps a touch of growth.
4 Stars.
Caroline Burns Cooke