Steven McQueen's Shame is a direct and unflinching examination of sexual addiction and codependency as essentially two sides of the same coin.
The director chooses to lead us into his characters' world with the use of stark angles and muted blue tones. A subway ride is akin to a trip down the River Styx, the faces of all around him empty and hollow; you can taste the defeat and sadness in that train car. The few moments the color scheme truly shifts in the film are those in which it seems the central character Brandon, as played by Michael Fassbender, is on the verge of slipping out of his metaphysical coma. In these later moments in the film, it seems he may be awakening. The air has that different texture, as if the sun is rising.
The opening scenes put Brandon's manhood directly in our faces. The nude scenes in the film are both vulgar and plain. They teeter on exploitative, but always fall on the side of an ordinary rawness. The characters are more comfortable baring their bodies than they are baring their own souls.
Brandon's sister Sissy, played by Carey Mulligan, is as troubled as he, though less functional and more honest. She is a mess but can at least acknowledge that her spirit is a train wreck. Her shining moment in the film is made all the more powerful by Brandon's reaction to it. In their eyes, we see the glimmer of a shared, painful past.
The chemistry between Fassbender and Nicole Beharie, who portrays a woman he meets through work, is endearing, the tenderness they convey together on screen is touching. Intimacy terrifies Brandon and watching him graze the surface of it is an exercise in disappointment. Like a child looking out at play, he is forever trapped behind closed doors. While Brandon is threatened by closeness, his sister craves it. Her attachments are all-consuming, her neediness unbound. She desperately wants to be loved and to love, a desire that crushes her and perpetually bewilders her brother.
McQueen isn't out to manipulate or to explain. The movie is sometimes like a series of snapshots. We don't walk away crying with Brandon or his sister. We've been given access to a window into their lives. Much time is not devoted to characterization or exposition. We live in the moment with these two wanderers and witness their pain; the film doesn't deign to ask for our compassion. Even so, watching Brandon struggle in the midst of the film with his addiction and rage against it, try to tear it apart, and destroy it is moving. His compulsion is savage, turning him into a manipulative predator. He is a person in the throes of addiction and he will do anything to satisfy the unquenchable need. The drive turns Brandon into something both brilliant and disgusting, simultaneously mesmerizing and pathetic.
Joseph Campbell tells a story in his series Power of Myth in which he describes a woman who finds she has lived the larger portion of her life underwater. It is only when she is out of the water that she realizes she was a moment before submerged. Living with an addiction is like living life underwater. One wonders at the end if Brandon will ever emerge from his dark existence. We may see the sun rise in Brandon's world, but we will never see it set.
