Fear and Loathing in the Naked City
At the end of the 80's Brett Easton Ellis wrote a book that would come to define the era that followed. American Psycho was, in turns, hilarious, nauseating, frustratingly and deliberately monotonous, graphic and searingly satirical.
Whilst watching Steve Mcqueens at times unbearable follow up to 'Hunger' I was reminded of the sheer blank slickness of the protagonist of Ellis' novel Patrick Bateman, a vacuum rather than a man, formed and defined by the city and the culture that has swallowed him up.
In 'Shame'Michael Fassbenders Brendan is a rewired, ultimately humanised take on this vampirism of excess, he is essentially a void that can only seemingly be filled by anonymous sexual encounters and pornography. It is a brave, unsettling piece of work, unflinching in its detail and I dont think I have ever seen sex displayed in such an odd combination of compulsive fever and sheer coldness.
We are introduced to Brandon in a spotless, sleek apartment, dominated by huge looming windows that open out onto New York. This is both a featureless glass cage and a window out onto a world that does not return its gaze and Mcqueen returns to this motif throughout the film to portray the crushing isolation of the inhabitants of this strange metropolis. It is the arrival of Carey Mulligans insecure sibling Sissy though which inevitably opens Brandon up to the real world he is so desperate to escape.
This is a film that does not fill in the blanks for the viewer and is all the better for it. Mulligans performance as the needy, confused wannabe singer is at times mesmerising and may well be the best thing she's ever done, a mournful, heartbreakingly tender version of New York, New York is filmed in tight close up and accentuates the claustrophobia that envelops both her and her brother. Indeed it may be overly reductionist to suggest Shame is as much a prison movie as Hunger (it would be a simplification of both films) but these are trapped characters, Sissy staggering punch drunk from disappointment after disappointment, Brandon, charismatic and wealthy yet unable to escape the mania of his addiction.
Hunger was a brilliant, beautiful, stark piece of work, all measured mise en scene and aesthetic beauty, an utterly unique take on the troubles. Where Shame differs is in its heightened sense of theatricality. There are moments where score, performance and direction combine to create an almost unbearable sense of intensity and whereas in Hunger I got the impression that the film was artistically almost flawless but not a character piece, Mcqueen does attempt to, if not explore the soul of Brandon at least delve deeply into the inherent drama of his actions. This is best demonstrated in an incredible scene in the subway where Brandon and a young woman play out a simple flirtation that results in the kind of compulsive behaviour that characterises his life. Mcqueen engenders such a sense of rising panic and naked longing from this simple exchange through the subtlety of the performances and the painfully intense use of a wonderful score that the audience can barely breathe.
Indeed Fassbender is inevitably at the core of the film, his mask of hunger and suffering perfectly encapsulated in freeze frame in one of the films more graphic sequences. It is clear that this is not about sex, certainly not a film about joy, rather a desperate search for identity in a city that simultaneously consumes and submerges.
