Shame

[Pubrick]

New Red-Band

this is not a good movie trailer.

this movie is like the anti-hugo cabret.

[Jeremy Blackman]

What a shame.

[polkablues]

Not to impugn Samsong's opinions in any way, but I'm not prepared to dismiss this film yet based on one six-word review.

[Pozer]

Trailer is better than the movie.

how bout after TWO six-word reviews?

[Jeremy Blackman]

Only after a proper haiku.

[samsong]

michael fassbender's
cock is more compelling than
mcqueen's dour outlook.

pretty bad but it's all i care to come up with at the moment. 

i wasn't a big fan of hunger, and what i did enjoy about it -- formal impeccability and fassbender's performance -- is all i enjoyed about shame to a far lesser degree.  as with his first film i feel mcqueen gets lost in his aesthetic to the point that any sort of thematic potency is lost to redundancy or just plain obviousness.  it's as if he's so convinced the greatness of his style and subject matter are enough to make for a good film and the rest will take care of itself.  he's also managed to take his formalist rigor and distill it to a point where keeping interest is challenging if not impossible.  the actors do well to counteract some of this as fassbender and mulligan do what they can to humanize a mechanical study glancing over of self destructiveness, even managing to succeed sporadically, which makes it all the more disappointing that this film isn't great.  mcqueen is clearly a talented filmmaker but he needs to get over himself. 

[O.]

mcqueen is clearly a talented filmmaker but he needs to get over himself.

Was the subject matter even that interesting?

[samsong]

the premise is what drew me to this film in the first place.  a character study about a sex addict starring a great actor and directed by a visually inclined filmmaker should've made for a much better movie than this.

[Just Withnail]

mcqueen is clearly a talented filmmaker but he needs to get over himself.

Was the subject matter even that interesting?

[chere mill]

beautifully shot, especially the elongated single take sequences, but a poorly conceived film. mcqueen can't get a handle on his material. he tries to introduce themes and characters (most notably carey mulligan's role) which ultimately are not cohesive with the subject matter. the amount of weight mcqueen tries to add on such flimsy material comes off as bloated, and even borderline puritanical. fassbender and mulligan do what they can. a disappointment.

[O.]

I liked it more than Hunger. If anything, how you guys feel about this one is how I felt about Hunger, and vice versa.

[ElPandaRoyal]

WTF??? You guys are nuts! This is the best movie of the year, with probably the best perfomance AND directing. In fact, to me it is a masterclass in mise-en-scene, in editing, in composition, in acting... McQueen trusts his work and his actors so much that he lets his shots take their time, he shoots their bodies and faces like I haven't seen in a while. The first 10 and final 20/15 minutes are breathtaking and intense, and everything in between is clearly, and I mean CLEARLY, as faithful to the characters and themes it portrays as can be - the scene where Fassbender's character goes running in New York out of frustration about his sister is amazing and claerly tells you what a mess that guy is. It's repetitious, because, well, that's what an addiction is supposed to be, but at the same time the movie is about so much more than sickness. It's a shame it's getting dismissed by you guys, as it is, I repeat myself, one of the best movies of the last few years.

[polkablues]

I'm with the Panda on this one.

[ElPandaRoyal]

Let's take this movie to the pantheon it belongs.

[The Ultimate Badass]

SPOILERISH

I thought this movie was pretty brilliant. After watching it I thought, "The Human Bonobo".

I was totally drawn into this film. I think the direction was fantastic. As Fassbender's character spiraled deeper into darkness I was with him and felt I understood him. I loved the beautifully grimy portrait of Manhattan, and the oppressively venal  atmosphere of corporate office culture. Just a great movie.

At its essence I think this movie is about the divorcing of sex from love, or any meaning whatsoever. Sex simply becomes a biological function to achieve biological result -- a process to cope with even the smallest stresses of life for Fassbender's character. What this film is is a fantastically realized glimpse into the pathological behavior of this character, but we're also shown how he arrived here.  In the scenes with his sister we can see their relationship is not normal.  I think it's clear they had sex with one another in the past and she also suffers a similar affliction. But I think the roots of all this are implied  in a single line uttered by his sister in a consoling voice on his answering machine toward the end of the movie: "We're not bad people, we just grew up in a bad place". Inferred in this statement is a past of sexual abuse at home, as children. They both probably found comfort and security in one another through sex after their ideas of sex had been twisted by abuse. As a coping mechanism, sex became simply a thing that produces a result, devoid of all meaning. Now they both live in guilt of this.

I enjoyed the elegant and subtle way this was communicated. There were no flashbacks, or long monologues. It was done cinematically.