Shame

Steve McQueen follows up his first film Hunger, with the story of a man with a different hunger. Brendan, Michael Fassbender, is a successful New Yorker with an ordered and very tidy apartment. He’s an attractive man, we see him flirting with a woman on the subway she seems to respond to his advances, but disappears in the crowd thwarting him. We see him paying a woman for sex and looking at porn on a computer. It soon becomes apparent that Brendan has an addiction to sex.


He seems to have worked out how he can do this and what his priorities are in life. This is all built in an existence built around his addiction. His world is turned upside down with the arrival of his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan). She’s an aspiring musician and ends up sleeping on Brendan’s couch and sleeping with his boss.

Throughout the film Brendan is confronted about his addiction, or at least his interaction with the people around him puts his addiction into perspective. The arrival of his sister interrupts his privacy; his married boss spends a lot of time chatting up women in bars. More tellingly maybe is when he goes on a date with a colleague and tells her that he sees no point in having a relationship. With her later on we see the first flickers of regret with his life.

To me it seems that Brendan is a man who wants to isolate himself from other people. It’s as if he doesn’t want to be in a situation where he would have to explain his behaviour to anyone else. In the Basil Dearden film Victim, there’s a scene where Dirk Bogarde confesses to his wife that he’s gay. He does this from the shadows while his wife is in the light. McQueen uses this chiaroscuro throughout the film which is either an indication that Brendan is keeping those around him in the dark, is keeping himself in the dark and therefore deluding himself, or all of the above.

The film is visually arresting, McQueen does so well at designing and creating the images, he did this as well with Hunger. I love the way that he uses images to inform us as to the nature of the character. The first scene of Brendan wandering round his apartment says so much about him. There’s also a beautiful scene of Sissy sings New York, New York and a tear comes to Brandon’s eye. You never know when shame will come and find you, seems to be the message.