Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. And indeed wow. Been a while since I've walked out of the cinema barely able to speak. And I wasn't the only one, don't think I heard a voice as I left the unusually busy early bird screening yesterday with my friend Kate.
This is a great film for so many reasons I don't know quite where to start. I suppose first of all I should say that considering the subject matter - a man with a sex addiction - it is handled so perfectly, without glamour or titillation, leaving you in no doubt that this isn't a giggle-inducing problem but something quite emotionally devastating. It's human, that is the key, about the person not the action. The sex scenes are icily detached.
Director Steve McQueen achieves this with subtlety, atmosphere and art. Few words, gob-smacking performances from Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan as brother and sister Brandon and Cissy and beautiful, nay a heart-wrenching score set against a glamourous New York back drop that feels for the most part incongruously grimy and seedy.
Was there ever something incestuous between the brother and sister, for example, or does Brandon's relationship with sex mean that he has thoughts about his sister that he knows he shouldn't...is the relationship with Cissy key to what led him to living this superficially social but ultimately disconnected life? I could go on.
And finally I must just mention those performances again. I've said it many times before on this blog but there is a great skill in an actor conveying so much in the face. In one scene Fassbender has to convince that despite the fact that he's indulging in a threesome and, to put it indelicately, banging away, his soul is tormented by shame, emotional detachment and disgust with himself. The pain on his face is heart-wrenching.
It won't come as a surprise that I'm going to give this a high score, 90% in fact. On IMDb it's got 80% with a Metacritic score of 72%. On Rotten Tomatoes it has 79% from critics and 79% of visitors gave it 3.5 stars or more.
But as this is a Guardian 50 biggest film challenge contender I need to compare it to their own review. Naturally I'm giving it 5 stars. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian has given it four stars concluding:
Shame is an interesting title: Brandon feels spasms of disgust and self-pity more than shame, but the point is rather that shame lies deeply buried under all of this. Brandon and Sissy live in an underworld melodrama of fear – not so much Crime and Punishment, but Addiction and Humiliation. With tremendous performances from Fassbender and Mulligan, and such superb technique from McQueen, this is a horrible inferno.
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