1. vicbarry

   10

   From time to time a movie arrives in cinemas that will leave such an impression that no matter what you do, it’ll always live in your mind. And Shame is one such movie. Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, who is a 30 something man living in New York, with a seemingly good job, nice apartment and quite an appetite for sex and sexual release. Hookers, strangers, work colleagues, even the staff toilet all provide a release in some shape or form for Brandon, who is a sex addict. The Irish New Yorker’s life revolves around his addiction. Be it in the work place or on his laptop, sex never seems to be too far away from his mind. That is until his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) arrives and upsets the balance quite a bit. Now Brandon has his sister to contend with as she moves in with him and he finds his life spiralling out of control. Michael Fassbender is on the fass (see what I did there) track to super stardom. His performance in Shame is the best of his career. It is something that, simply put, is out of this world. Every time he’s on screen he draws you in like a super magnet. Your eyes never leave his and you linger on every word, motion and subtleties that he offers up. He’s hypnotic. Case and point is the scene in the restaurant with his work colleague. Every time the bumbling waiter comes over, and interrupts it kind of knocks you on your ass and you realise you watching a film, before being sucked right back in. Its incredibly intense. At times you can almost see the light turn on inside Brandon's mind when he sees a woman he fancies. And you’re sitting there just mesmerised that an actor could actually project something like that into your conscious. Carey Mulligan also pulls off one of the greatest performances of her career. She has an undercurrent of intensity that lends itself to give her an incredible presence on screen. The chemistry between brother and sister is one that will have you wondering just how much chemistry they actually have. At times its almost incestuous and uncomfortable to watch, which will have you discussing the relationship the two siblings have for some time. Steve McQueen has written (along with Abi Morgan) and directed one of the best movies of the last 10 years. Watching Shame is not like your average trip to the cinema. This will leave a mark on you for some time to come. Again, the words hypnotic come to mind. And maybe I’m losing my mind, but the hypnotic effect is induced even more by the sound mix. Not the soundtrack (which is incredibly simple yet incredibly poignant) but the actual sound mix. It just seems to be at a slightly louder level than one is accustomed to. Computer hard drives, people, phones, everything on the soundmix just sucks you in completely. Its an enveloping experience. By the time the movie is over and you get a bit of silence, it takes a few minutes to come back down to earth. As for the sex, well there’s no shortage of it. It’s certainly something you won’t be taking granny to see. But during the sex, the imagery that is bestowed upon the audience signifies nothing about pleasure. It constantly hits you with obsession, routine and addiction. This movie will just climb into your mind, and melt it. I really can’t say enough good things about this amazing piece of cinema. Shame is a haunting, hypnotic and incredibly surreal cinema going experience. Just mind-blowing. This is an ABSOLUTE MUST WATCH!… Expand

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     2 of 2 users said yes
2. roscoeswaffle

   4

   Shame summarizes its own fundamental problem in Carey Mulligan's line, "We're not bad, we just come from a bad place." The bad place that Sissy and Brandon come from is where others have moved on to more au courant dysfunctions, while Brandon got left behind with a circa-1995 sex addiction and Sissy got left behind with the depression fostered by having a brother with a circa-1995 sex addiction. It's remotely possible that the movie might have made something interesting of this notion of being left behind - the unsexy out-of-dateness of Brandon's sex addiction - but Shame evinces a nearly absolute lack of self-awareness of the difficulties it brings upon itself by attempting to engage a topic that no longer has much cultural currency. There's a glimmer of promise when Brandon, on a date with his co-worker Marianne, asks her to feel a bump on the back of his head and explains, playfully, that he's a Neanderthal (and then goes on to describe the childhood mishap that actually produced the bump). It's worth noting that the exchange of dialogue in this scene is practically the only passage in the movie that doesn't feel oppressively contrived. A viewer who hasn't yet given up might suppose that Shame is finally pushing through to a recognition of Brandon as belonging to the wrong era: he has the misfortune to be the Neanderthal who survived the extinction of the culture's interest in sex addiction. All he's survived, though, in the constricted view that the movie is willing to allow itself, is a vaguely dysfunctional childhood in New Jersey. Curiously, the movie alludes ambiguously to a different (the same?) childhood in Ireland. The Irish childhood is another glimmer of promise; it suggests a whole other larger context, in which Brandon's struggles with himself derive from and are justified by a formative guilt-laden Irish Catholic upbringing (in Ireland, so much more guilt-laden than New Jersey can ever be). In this context, Brandon fits plausibly into the movie's frame because his origin is from outside the movie's setting. As a New Yorker with a sex addiction, he's an anachronism, but as an Irish immigrant, he's an outsider grappling with a plausible burden. But to make the Irish-immigrant narrative plausible, the movie would need to allow itself room to explore the larger context, and this is exactly what the movie rigorously declines to do.… Expand

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     6 of 11 users said yes
3. georgeblomme

   3

   I wish I could give this movie a good rating. Its starts with a fairly handsome guy, nicely built in all proportions, who is a sex addict. Sometimes he gets what he wants (always friendly; this guy does not rape), but on other occasions he cannot produce. His sister lives with him, and she appears to be on the verge of suicide from Day One, making this film complicated and dark. The guy, who suddenly seems to have lost interest and or ability to perform sex, plus put up with the antics of his sister, walks endlessly through the night streets of Manhattan, or jogs and jogs, or rides half-filled, old newspaper-littered subway trains endlessly. These scenes where he's losing himself, or possibly trying to find a way out of sexual addiction go on and on -- making this 1-hour, 45-minute film seem like a 5-hour ride on a dirty subway train. There are good street shots of Manhattan, but at the now-famous Standard hotel on the High Line, they miss the opportunity to have the woman bracing herself against the picture glass picture windows while being pumped from behind - something that supposedly happens regularly in real life every night - much to the delight of High Line voyeurs. Why does the film shy away from the big window scenes - maybe a nod to hotel management's requests? Go see, but I think you may be disappointed too.… Expand

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     2 of 4 users said yes

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