Juvenile Cinephile

BEST PICTURE

DRIVE

TAKE SHELTER

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

MELANCHOLIA

WARRIOR

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

BEST DIRECTOR

NICOLAS WINDING REFN, DRIVE

JEFF NICHOLS, TAKE SHELTER

TOMAS ALFREDSON, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

LYNNE RAMSAY, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

DAVID FINCHER, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

BEST ACTOR

MICHAEL FASSBENDER, SHAME

RYAN GOSLING, DRIVE

MICHAEL SHANNON, TAKE SHELTER

TOM HARDY, WARRIOR

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, 50/50

BEST ACTRESS

KRISTEN WIIG, BRIDESMAIDS

KIRSTEN DUNST, MELANCHOLIA

OLIVIA COLMAN, TYRANNOSAUR

TILDA SWINTON, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

CHARLIZE THERON, YOUNG ADULT

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

ALBERT BROOKS, DRIVE

BRAD PITT, THE TREE OF LIFE

EZRA MILLER, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

PATTON OSWALT, YOUNG ADULT

ALAN RICKMAN, HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

KIERA KNIGHTLEY, A DANGEROUS METHOD

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG, MELANCHOLIA

CAREY MULLIGAN, SHAME

JESSICA CHASTAIN, THE TREE OF LIFE

JESSICA CHASTAIN, TAKE SHELTER

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

WARRIOR

TAKE SHELTER

ATTACK THE BLOCK

RANGO

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

DRIVE

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

WINNIE THE POOH

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

BEST DOCUMENTARY

SENNA

BILL CUNNINGHAM: NEW YORK

BEING ELMO

PROJECT NIM

BEST ANIMATED FILM

WINNIE THE POOH

SHAME

DIRECTED BY STEVE MCQUEEN

*NOTE: THIS IS JUST AS MUCH A CRITICAL INTIMATION AS A REVIEW.  SPOILERS ABOUND*

Is this film straight-forward as I think or as abstract as every differing opinion on what they saw on screen thinks?  Or is either of us just plain wrong?  It was obviously that this film would cause a stir but probably not in the way I have expected.  Steve McQueen’s SHAME has been accused of being the conservative, puritanical, homophobic, and predictable (in some cases inhibiting these features for some reviewers all at the same time).   I personally think this is a film where the ‘shame’ is not at all of what is ‘plaguing’ the main character Brandon Sullivan but the ‘shame’ lies in the root of what sprung into that ‘plague’.  

It is inferred and said in the film that something happened to both Brandon and his sister Sissy, that they came from a bad place.  Nothing else is really said but understood by both of the characters and the home they came from and any other family unit is not mentioned at all in the film.  Did they come from a broken home?  Was their upbringing sexually charged?  Whatever it is Sissy unexpectedly re-entering Brandon’s life brings back memories he had wished to forget but nonetheless lives with day-to-day.  Their brother and sister relationship does not at all seem to be normal.  There is something off.  They try to maintain some closeness by sitting close and watching TV but it all dissolves into both of them having absolutely knife-cutting back and forth dialogues of insults.  They are both too comfortable being completely naked in the presence of the other including Brandon attacking Sissy for interrupting his masturbation session in the shower. There is also a bedroom scene that shows a relationship stunted in adolescence than two adults.  Credit to Michael Fassbender and Carrie Mulligan (each snubbed by the Academy for acting nominations) for making every conversation among these two characters be so bare-bones real and palpable.  Brandon and Sissy each share a certain fake quality to them and each know it, frequently using it against each other, which makes the reason they need each other also necessary.  But neither are really capable of acting rational, instead going to extremes to act out their needs and traumas. 

Sissy entering Brandon’s life serves as a reminder.  She is flesh and blood but also somebody who is supposed to mean a lot to him.  He tries to act like he cares but really a lot of his whole life is a front for his real life of hooking up for anonymous sex and encounters both physical and web-based. 

Honestly, Brandon does a pretty good job managing it until she comes around.  It is not that she completely abhors his behavior, she is equally promiscuous and frankly is more concerned about the lack of real intimacy in his life.  Her having pleasure makes him realize he cannot really find pleasure, even when having sex with somebody he knows and likes personally.  It almost becomes a job that Brandon decides to have a ‘lost weekend’ seeking all kinds of ways to have sex.  Brandon addiction is power which is why after getting beat up he goes to the closest gay club where he can exert power with no apologies about (I do not find the shot homophobic but I find the inference that he can within 30 seconds get a guy to go down on him to definitely feed on a lot of people’s prejudices to be a good criticism).  He maintains control of his addictions but something about Sissy coming back into his life shakes his entire foundation.  

There is trauma that is the foundation for his addiction that likely happened in childhood but nobody has the slightest idea about it.   Brandon is in a male fantasy on his terms.  Women want him and men want to be him but Sissy knows too much about him to not find his life a bit sad.  Sissy tries to have a fun, intimate sex life that Brandon does not really understand and pushes her aside.  I am behind the incest accusation.  Sissy is almost too cloying (this is sometimes the mark of people abused who despite their traumas continue to submit to their abusers) around Brandon and there is a hint of guilt and dread in Brandon’s conscious avoidance of her outcries and feelings that go beyond usual brother-sister drama.  She actively tries to get his attention, impress him, and get close to him.  When she screws his boss, it was almost a cry for attention.  Her post-coital bedside snuggle attempt with Brandon triggers triggers him to act his most volatile.  She wanted him, not the lame, taken, no-game to speak of boss. 

It is safe to say, Brandon does not share the same feelings as Sissy.  She became disposable like any of the prostitutes he had or the anonymous women he met over the internet.  He does however feel her burden of presence, which is the ‘shame’.  He had to have started with her.  She was the closest to him.  He ruined her.  He might not have been the first there to ruin her but he had to be a contributor.  But he, himself, might have also been ruined yet he also was the inheritor of that power.  And he is still has to be the only lifeline to Sissy that makes her all the more damaged.  This becomes very nature versus nurture question.  Sissy assures Brandon it is nurture from a bad place but Brandon does feel like it is becoming a nature for him as a terrible person.  He cannot get close to people with sex because he knows exactly the effect it had on people closest to him.   The real tragedy is that Sissy coming back into his life does not make Brandon, based on her own agency, rage or anger, face it but rather her tragic lionizing of him does the trick.  

The incest may not have reached any physical contact on-screen but emotionally it is so overwrought.  There are no boundaries between these two.  They continue to have sex lives but Brandon’s damage is the power burden he exhibits while Sissy continues a path of finding pleasure that pretty much is undercut by her once source of pleasure shutting her out.  Everything may seem conservative in SHAME because the ‘shame’ is one of the more far-reaching taboos.  Nothing in Brandon’s ‘lost weekend’ can ever really seem as extreme or depth-sinking as his past.   His addiction is a burden, a job, a necessity.  

I could just be giving this film too much credit.  For such a film with great leading performances, nobody in the supporting cast is memorable or worth noting.  The choices of setting for certain scenes leaves something a bit desired.  The ending that McQueen may have thought is open-ended could easily be seen as a moral lesson for Fassbender’s ‘naughty boy’.  The ‘lost weekend’ scenes are jarringly beautiful.  Which begs the question, is Brandon finally getting his pleasure or are we, the audience, just too mesmerized by the beautiful people on screen?  The dramatic cues of one character’s fate also felt too close to the edge of melodrama.  McQueen is probably grateful the positive and negative response to his film is as diverse but this Rorschach blot of a film may need something a little more.  Is the ‘shame’ sex addiction itself or something that if we are to be grounded in reality lies an unspeakable situation (Because who really cries out accusations of incest or sexual abuse so simply?)? 

For its faults, SHAME remains a film I cannot get out of my head that is elevated by the performances of Fassbender and Mulligan (whom with this performance sold me on her playing Daisy Buchanan in the upcoming adaptation of The Great Gatsby) who are every bit as good, haunting, and emotionally-naked as any nominated performance of 2011.  It is not the most well-written script and not the most craftily direct film but the performances make the movie stay with you rather than go in the one-hundred different bad directions it could have gone as a morality play of something the public snickers at just by the term ‘sex addict’.  And for that I am grateful for its existence and being one of the most hotly debated films of 2011 into 2012.