As blunt as its title, Shame is a film about the simultaneous complexities and primalities of human emotion. From its opening sequences we are confronted with nude shots of Fassbender, we share his most intimate moments, from masturbating to urinating. Brandon suffers silently from an overwhelming lust, which seems to derive from an intrinsic sense of emptiness in his life. I have never witnessed a film which can possess such a dichotomy of the (mutually dependent) graphic and subtle. Yes it's very base, it's very visceral - there is, predictably, a lot of crude sex - but this is told with such style that you can see there's a deep sadness in Brandon's past and present.
An omnipresent theme in postmodern American art, the disappointing nature of the American Dream is alluded to, with Carey Mulligan’s melancholy rendition of ‘New York, New York’. This scene was apparently shot with three cameras in real time and in one take, with Fassbender never having heard Mulligan sing, his reaction being completely authentic. The camera hovers on Sissy for an uncomfortable time span, forcing us to watch her in many ways pathetic state as she gazes to an off-screen presence and laments slowly, poignantly and painfully. It then mirrors this stare at Brandon, and through such matched juxtaposition we see that they are the same, brutally unhappy parts of one whole.
The reason for the siblings’ unhappiness is never revealed in the film, instead we are given random mismatched pieces of their past in the form as subtle as Sissy flinching when a man moves towards her wrist, to Brandon’s unexplained scarring on his back. We don’t need to be told explicitly what mutual horror they faced in their childhood – it is manifested in what they do, how they appear and perform, as well as through the beautiful cinematography throughout.
Something that caught my attention stylistically throughout the film was the use of a blue colour palette whenever Fassbender’s character is alone in shot, and he is isolated as such frequently. Blue here contrasts with the vapid gold and yellows of the city, casting Brandon as cold, lifeless, alone. It encapsulates that bitterly ironic feeling of being alone amongst masses.
Moreover, more indie elements of Shame include McQueen's use of long takes. It really unsettles the edit-trained viewer (including myself) for a shot to last longer than normal, or worse, for a shot to continue to frame someone's face when they are listening to the other person talking. McQueen uses whole scenes made of one shot. The most impressive is when Brandon goes out for a run and a tracking shot films a couple of minutes of him just running, clearly frustrated, until he leaves the shot at a crossroads and we (the camera) do not follow him. This is irritating for us, the viewer as we are so spoilt in cinema at having multiple, privileged viewpoints of the action. The director removes this privilege and tells us that no, you are just a voyeur, you can't have everything you want, this is the film as I want you to see it. It's refreshing.
As with many indie films also, you're left thinking 'well, what was all that about?'. Shame is bleak, graphic and grotesque often, and its ending is so open. Once again destroying conformities: we do not get a satisfying narrative ark; I'm not convinced the characters develop throughout the film apart from becoming more angry and twisted. There is no sympathetic character, and there is no resolution (sorry if that's a spoiler). And yet, I felt moved.
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