Shame.
Couple thoughts on Shame, which I saw last night in at the AMC theatre on 68th street and Broadway. Same place where I saw Avatar and, ugh, multiple Harry Potters. So, mainstream as they come and probably just as filled with bedbugs.
I expected to enter a theatre with solitary audience members spread out with many seats between one another and a damp trench coat over each of their laps. And that was pretty much what I found, except one guy was eating nachos. This perplexed me. Maybe that’s just his go-to porn nosh it being so aqueous and sticky.
The film is beautiful, to be sure, and minimal so that you pay close fucking attention (as it were) to Fassbender and Mulligan’s subtleties. For all the full-frontal and supposedly debased adventures Fassbender’s Brandon gets into to lose himself in some semblance of intimacy, the most excruciating moment is when his sister Sissy (Mulligan) sings a slow, spare version of Sinatra’s usually show-boating standard “New York, New York.” McQueen holds the camera so close to her face you’re forced to examine her skin and ears and over-processed blonde curls. As her voice falters and finds its footing, you’re utterly, embarrassingly captivated. She’s laid bare and you as the audience member are asked to stare. In this moment I felt the truth of Brandon’s fear of intimacy. Because I had to do quite a lot not to turn away.
And so, you’re asking, what about the sex? Well, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Some mildly arousing, none repellent. At its core this film is about loneliness and how even in the midst of doing the one thing that supposedly brings human beings closer together — literally one inside of the other — one can still feel trapped and alone inside yourself. Duh, we all knew that before going in.
Given that I could probably hand-draw Michael Fassbender’s penis from memory now, Shame does suffer from a lack of specificity. McQueen must have done this purposefully to avoid the typical tracing Brandon’s neurosis/addiction back to some childhood incident or bad family situation or shitty break-up. Addiction is incidental to these, not sourced. It emerges from a cloud so attempting to tease out a string would be too simplistic. However, I could do with a little more than Sissy weeping to his voicemail, “We’re not bad people, we just come from a bad place.” Knowing only that they grew up in New Jersey, I mean, I understand, yes, that’s true, you do literally come from a bad place. But that’s probably not where the sex addiction comes from.
I just wanted McQueen to throw me a bone.
Instead I got like 17 boners.
ps. Even after all of this I’d still let Michael bend my fass.
