Nothing to be ashamed of
Dec. 14th, 2011 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniThe theatre was full yesterday evening when M. and I saw Steve McQueen's second film, Shame. The film is doing well over here (only -12 rated unlike the American NC-17) and has received good reviews from the critics, like this one from Le Monde. Of course, everybody praises Michael Fassenber who plays Brandon, the sex addict. And he truly deserves all the praises he's gotten. He does carry the film.
I was looking forward to seeing Shame because I was very impressed by McQueen's debut, three years ago, and I knew this was a filmaker to follow.
And indeed he's still very much the super talented cinematographer we had discovered with Hunger. That said, I have to confess that I prefer Hunger.
Shame is not a bad movie, far from it. It is actually a good movie starring and incredible actor. It is elegant and stylish, which was a given for anyone who knows McQueen's work and background. As I said before, when I reviewed Hunger, the guy is an alchemist. He turns mundane stuff or even garbage and shit into gold. This is a filmaker who always finds grace and beauty in ugliness, who transcends base acts with his art.
And here again the magic works.
The shots are beautiful, the frame is always perfect, the light is spot-on(!) and the film has true moments of grace like the opening scene that is a key scene playing on the Eros/Thanatos theme (a post-coital Brandon lies on his blue sheets, still, with a look in his eyes that seems liveless) that is a leitmotiv throughout the movie, or the wonderful jogging scene in which the camera follows Michael Fassbender running in New York(and he runs while listening to Bach which is perfect because his stride fits in the tempo), or the singing scene in which Carey Mulligan, who plays Sissy, sings a slow and depressive version of "New York New York".
The music is very important in the film which I didn't expect. It often provides the emotion that helps to balance out the cold character study and cold lights.
And yes Fassbender is amazing in the role. Someone on twitter said that if anyone wondered what charisma meant they had to watch Shame starring Michael Fassbender. He is magnetic, and his own beauty, that handsome face and that perfect body, helps the viewers to deal with the sordid situations that are revealed on screen.
He is beautiful even when he pees or fucks from behind a whore against a picture window. His body is so perfect that during the scene with the whore against the window it called to my mind Da Vinci's famous drawing on a human figure being the principal source of proportion, The Vitruvian Man. And Brandon's apartment is also very geometrical, tidy and clean. And the whole film is like that, very precise and balanced, and mathematical. Never tasteless, never coarse. Like Bach's music.
In a way, Shame is a Humanist film, focusing on the human matter. But this character the film studies, almost clinically, is concealing turmoil and chaos beneath the cool and clean surface. And slowly the film reveals the man in pain behind the Vitruvian Man. Carey Mulligan's character helps unveiling the truth about her brother, as she mirrors Brandon. The opposite and yet the same. She's messy while he looks so clean; she falls in love and in relationships too fast while he avoids commitment; she's suicidal and all over the place while he's a successful yuppy who seems to live life the fullest thanks to his money and his obvious good looks and sex-appeal (women literally fall into his arms).
Except that there's no joy in his lifestyle, his life looks empty, his sex life looks sad, and he's deeply ashamed of his addiction, afraid that anyone would find out about his dirty secret, the "bad place" he truly lives in.
Fassbender is good at showing that man in pain too. His face owns the screen and haunts you for a while after the film is over. He is beautiful but not sexy at all which is a real tour de force. He was so sensual and sexy in Fish Tank for instance! He embodied what any heterosexual girl female lusts for.
But the topic here isn't about lust, it's about compulsive sex, about non-stop sexual activities (congress with strangers, encounters with hookers, but also masturbation in bathrooms or while watching porn, of the filthiest variety, on the internet, etc...); it's about loneliness and being trapped. In Hunger, Fassbender played a man in jail, trying to give a meaning to his life by being in control of his body and starving himself, and here he plays a man whose own body is a cage, a man desperate for release but every orgasm his body achieves can't really give him satisfaction since his obsession, the source of his addiction, is in his psyché.
Even running in the streets of New York can't set him free.
So why do I prefer Hunger? Well, I think it was better written, and had something that Shame lacks, that is magnitude.
Shame is quite good but it isn't great because it isn't always very subtle. For instance, I found very cliché the storyline about the colleague with whom Brandon has a date, trying, for once, to have a normal relationship (or what is supposed to be normal) and sucking at it, especially when he takes her to a hotel room and can't get it up! The whole "it's not meaningless and animal sex anymore but the "real deal" this time with another human being, with emotional connection and such, so he loses his hardon" was very conventional, kinda prudish even. Maria's Lover did it first and better!
I also think that the flashbacks explaining how his face got injured were too long or rather too telling. We didn't need to see the boyfriend of the girl, whom he had crudely made a pass on in a bar, beat the crap out of him. I would have prefered a more elliptical writing there.
The threesome with the two gals, just after he had gay sex in a backroom (because hell, any hole would do!), was well-filmed but the idea of that threesome also sounded a bit cliché.
But above all, I think that Hunger had something rawer and more universal because it wasn't one character's study. It had a larger scope, something that everybody could relate to or, at least, ponder. A man suffering from sex addiction, or any other addiction is a different matter altogether, even though there are similarities between the two films (the self-destruction, the body's agony...).
Brandon looks smaller and smaller as the film progesses because his addiction shows him as a vulnerable and small human being, and in the great scheme of things, his problem seems small, even if it means the world to him. It can't resonate the same way Hunger did.
It's a performance film -- which Hunger wasn't really, in spite of Fassbender's weight loss--, and as terrific as the performance is, acting performances aren't what makes me love movies. I acknowledge charisma and great performances but I need more to be really under a film's spell.
Apparently FassB's performance in A Dangerous Method is praised too(looks like it's his year, if he doesn't get to be an Oscar nominee, there's no hope left for the Academy), but I heard that Cronenberg's film isn't very good. I bet that the writing is weak, and Cronenberg can't compete with McQueen in terms of cinematography.
Oh well, I will watch it nonetheless. Viggo and FassB is too tempting a cast to resist! And no, I don't feel ashamed for admitting that.
I was looking forward to seeing Shame because I was very impressed by McQueen's debut, three years ago, and I knew this was a filmaker to follow.
And indeed he's still very much the super talented cinematographer we had discovered with Hunger. That said, I have to confess that I prefer Hunger.
Shame is not a bad movie, far from it. It is actually a good movie starring and incredible actor. It is elegant and stylish, which was a given for anyone who knows McQueen's work and background. As I said before, when I reviewed Hunger, the guy is an alchemist. He turns mundane stuff or even garbage and shit into gold. This is a filmaker who always finds grace and beauty in ugliness, who transcends base acts with his art.
And here again the magic works.
The shots are beautiful, the frame is always perfect, the light is spot-on(!) and the film has true moments of grace like the opening scene that is a key scene playing on the Eros/Thanatos theme (a post-coital Brandon lies on his blue sheets, still, with a look in his eyes that seems liveless) that is a leitmotiv throughout the movie, or the wonderful jogging scene in which the camera follows Michael Fassbender running in New York(and he runs while listening to Bach which is perfect because his stride fits in the tempo), or the singing scene in which Carey Mulligan, who plays Sissy, sings a slow and depressive version of "New York New York".
The music is very important in the film which I didn't expect. It often provides the emotion that helps to balance out the cold character study and cold lights.
And yes Fassbender is amazing in the role. Someone on twitter said that if anyone wondered what charisma meant they had to watch Shame starring Michael Fassbender. He is magnetic, and his own beauty, that handsome face and that perfect body, helps the viewers to deal with the sordid situations that are revealed on screen.
He is beautiful even when he pees or fucks from behind a whore against a picture window. His body is so perfect that during the scene with the whore against the window it called to my mind Da Vinci's famous drawing on a human figure being the principal source of proportion, The Vitruvian Man. And Brandon's apartment is also very geometrical, tidy and clean. And the whole film is like that, very precise and balanced, and mathematical. Never tasteless, never coarse. Like Bach's music.
In a way, Shame is a Humanist film, focusing on the human matter. But this character the film studies, almost clinically, is concealing turmoil and chaos beneath the cool and clean surface. And slowly the film reveals the man in pain behind the Vitruvian Man. Carey Mulligan's character helps unveiling the truth about her brother, as she mirrors Brandon. The opposite and yet the same. She's messy while he looks so clean; she falls in love and in relationships too fast while he avoids commitment; she's suicidal and all over the place while he's a successful yuppy who seems to live life the fullest thanks to his money and his obvious good looks and sex-appeal (women literally fall into his arms).
Except that there's no joy in his lifestyle, his life looks empty, his sex life looks sad, and he's deeply ashamed of his addiction, afraid that anyone would find out about his dirty secret, the "bad place" he truly lives in.
Fassbender is good at showing that man in pain too. His face owns the screen and haunts you for a while after the film is over. He is beautiful but not sexy at all which is a real tour de force. He was so sensual and sexy in Fish Tank for instance! He embodied what any heterosexual girl female lusts for.
But the topic here isn't about lust, it's about compulsive sex, about non-stop sexual activities (congress with strangers, encounters with hookers, but also masturbation in bathrooms or while watching porn, of the filthiest variety, on the internet, etc...); it's about loneliness and being trapped. In Hunger, Fassbender played a man in jail, trying to give a meaning to his life by being in control of his body and starving himself, and here he plays a man whose own body is a cage, a man desperate for release but every orgasm his body achieves can't really give him satisfaction since his obsession, the source of his addiction, is in his psyché.
Even running in the streets of New York can't set him free.
So why do I prefer Hunger? Well, I think it was better written, and had something that Shame lacks, that is magnitude.
Shame is quite good but it isn't great because it isn't always very subtle. For instance, I found very cliché the storyline about the colleague with whom Brandon has a date, trying, for once, to have a normal relationship (or what is supposed to be normal) and sucking at it, especially when he takes her to a hotel room and can't get it up! The whole "it's not meaningless and animal sex anymore but the "real deal" this time with another human being, with emotional connection and such, so he loses his hardon" was very conventional, kinda prudish even. Maria's Lover did it first and better!
I also think that the flashbacks explaining how his face got injured were too long or rather too telling. We didn't need to see the boyfriend of the girl, whom he had crudely made a pass on in a bar, beat the crap out of him. I would have prefered a more elliptical writing there.
The threesome with the two gals, just after he had gay sex in a backroom (because hell, any hole would do!), was well-filmed but the idea of that threesome also sounded a bit cliché.
But above all, I think that Hunger had something rawer and more universal because it wasn't one character's study. It had a larger scope, something that everybody could relate to or, at least, ponder. A man suffering from sex addiction, or any other addiction is a different matter altogether, even though there are similarities between the two films (the self-destruction, the body's agony...).
Brandon looks smaller and smaller as the film progesses because his addiction shows him as a vulnerable and small human being, and in the great scheme of things, his problem seems small, even if it means the world to him. It can't resonate the same way Hunger did.
It's a performance film -- which Hunger wasn't really, in spite of Fassbender's weight loss--, and as terrific as the performance is, acting performances aren't what makes me love movies. I acknowledge charisma and great performances but I need more to be really under a film's spell.
Apparently FassB's performance in A Dangerous Method is praised too(looks like it's his year, if he doesn't get to be an Oscar nominee, there's no hope left for the Academy), but I heard that Cronenberg's film isn't very good. I bet that the writing is weak, and Cronenberg can't compete with McQueen in terms of cinematography.
Oh well, I will watch it nonetheless. Viggo and FassB is too tempting a cast to resist! And no, I don't feel ashamed for admitting that.