On "Shame"

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• leeroy says:

  November 30, 2011 at 1:46 am

  Moneyball is a real treat. By far Pitt’s best lead per­form­ance. I’ll note that I haven’t seen Tree of Life and am in no hurry to do so.
  Anyway, it’s a charm­er. A bit like The Social Network in that it’s behind the scenes atory, based on recent events, and adap­ted by Sorkin. But it’s got an odd, intim­ate, quiet vibe. Best base­ball movie I’ve seen since Bull Durham.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  November 30, 2011 at 10:14 am

  Brad’s bet­ter in “The Tree of Life” than he is in “Moneyball.”
  But then I hate sports.
  As for Michael Fassbender, some­times a penis is just a cigar.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  November 30, 2011 at 11:09 am

  I’m still enter­tain­ing a proxy grudge against “Moneyball,” although I sup­pose I should get around to con­triv­ing to see it some time soon. I ain’t pay­ing money to, though.

• Tony Dayoub says:

  November 30, 2011 at 11:40 am

  I really liked SHAME, too. But some have been unex­pec­tedly harsh towards it, and I really don’t get the anti­pathy. A mutu­al writer acquaint­ance of ours (not the Siren) even went so far as to cri­ti­cize McQueen’s lack of adher­ence to the real-life geo­graphy of Manhattan as if that should factor into the dis­cus­sion of SHAME’s mer­its. (Sorry, I grew up in Miami which loc­a­tion scouts use and abuse for whatever is deemed neces­sary in a movie shoot­ing down there.)
  Anyway, SHAME ranks high on my list of this year’s releases, if not neces­sar­ily in 2011’s top 10.

• c.t.h. says:

  November 30, 2011 at 12:24 pm

  Glenn, could you say more about the dangers you see in the (for lack of a bet­ter term) non-narrative film artist mak­ing a move to nar­rat­ive film mak­ing? I haven’t seen “Shame” but I appre­ci­ated “Hunger” quite a bit, and I thought some of its strongest moments could be tied to McQueen’s artist­ic sens­ib­il­ity that was developed out­side the nar­rat­ive cinema world, par­tic­u­larly the exten­ded stat­ic shot between the priest and Sands. Is it just a tend­ency for arty flour­ishes, or do you see unre­con­ciled form­al pri­or­it­ies muck­ing things up?

• Gus says:

  November 30, 2011 at 2:45 pm

  Really don’t under­stand the grudge against Moneyball. It’s ter­rif­ic through­out. Best movie of the year, no, but if you had any­thing good to say about the Social Network oth­er than its use of cam­era, you’ll have plenty to like at Moneyball.

• Asher says:

  December 1, 2011 at 12:49 am

  In part this com­ment is inten­ded as a par­ody of a cer­tain type of cinephile, but in part it’s how I actu­ally feel: I could­n’t tell how good Brad was in THE TREE OF LIFE because the movie was edited like a god­damn music video. As a music video mod­el, I thought he was bet­ter than Sean Penn, cer­tainly, who left no impres­sion what­so­ever (oth­er than the very clear impres­sion that he had no clue what he was doing), and bet­ter than Chastain, though she was­n’t giv­en much to do oth­er than being an unam­bigu­ously won­der­ful Earth Mom (yes, I know, that’s how the son sees her, but that’s part of the prob­lem with mak­ing a movie from the per­spect­ive of a small child with oed­ip­al issues, the view­er­’s sub­jec­ted to his simple-minded, warped vis­ion of things in ways that may not be so inter­est­ing), but that’s about all I can say. In the tiny bits of foot­age we see, he does do a fine job of evok­ing a sort of arche­type of a troubled, harsh and yet lov­ing 50s fath­er – much more humanely, I think, than most movies about dic­tat­ori­al 50s fath­ers – but I have a tough time judging a per­form­ance from such a frag­men­ted record.

• EOTW says:

  December 1, 2011 at 9:35 am

  Along with DDL in TWBB, Ledger in BM, his work in HUNGER is up there with the best perfs ever. Can’t wait for SHAME.

• Zach says:

  December 1, 2011 at 11:12 am

  As much as I was wowed by HUNGER, for some reas­on I’ve been on the fence about see­ing SHAME – although your review has led to a spike in my interest level, Glenn. Fassbender is indeed a tre­mend­ous tal­ent (can­’t wait to see A Dangerous Method). Some of the neg­at­ive reviews of SHAME have also served to piqué my interest, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing how reac­tion­ary and kvetchy they seem. Koresky’s review is pos­it­ively hos­tile, and Lane, who at least con­cedes that the film has its moments, is still dis­gus­ted by all the sex, which he finds insuf­fi­ciently erot­ic. I mean, isn’t that at least part of the point?
  It looks like the com­mon threads among the whiners is that the film is both a) too depress­ing and b) too obvi­ous. After all of the intric­acy of HUNGER, I find point b), at least, to be either dubi­ous or beside the point. But any­way I gotta see the film for myself.

• David N says:

  December 1, 2011 at 3:16 pm

  He’s not as cool or sexy or even as good as Fassbinder, but Tom Hiddleston has had a sim­il­arly great year.
  A big role in a pop­corn suc­cess – “Thor”, a big role in a Spielberg – “War Horse” and two excel­lent art house dra­mas with major British dir­ect­ors; “Archipelago” and “The Deep Blue Sea”.
  You just know Fassbinder would beat him in an arm wrestle though…

• Bettencourt says:

  December 1, 2011 at 5:11 pm

  Don’t for­get, Hiddleston also made a fine F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris,” which I believe was not only Allen’s best reviewed film in years but, I think, his highest gross­ing ever.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  December 1, 2011 at 11:27 pm

  I too would be inter­ested to hear what GK thinks are the pit­falls of visu­al artists mak­ing nar­rat­ive films, par­tic­u­larly with regard to Miranda July—I’ve often thought her weak­nesses had to do with not know­ing which story ele­ments are inter­est­ing and which are trite, but I’d nev­er thought to con­nect that to her arts background.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  December 2, 2011 at 10:18 am

  @ c.t.h., TFB: The lede of my MSN review is about 1/3 facetious, because in com­plete non-facetious truth I don’t hold much truck with pre­cisely the kind of gen­er­al­iz­a­tion I make there. Also, the deep­er you go into the issue, the more ques­tions come up. Are Matthew Barney’s often visu­ally arrest­ing but in large part infuri­at­ingly tur­gid (or are they bra­cingly absurd?) “Cremaster” pic­tures “nar­rat­ive films,” or art objects? I thought “Trash Humpers” would have made more sense as part of an installation/exhibit, and was infuri­ated by the crit­ics who acted as if it had any busi­ness being shown in theat­ers. As for July, my feel­ing is not that she does­n’t know the dif­fer­ence but has some act­ive invest­ment in try­ing to redeem trite, or “trite.” And I think her art back­ground DEFINITELY con­trib­utes strength to her film work; odd as it may seem, I thought the crawling-shirt stuff was a real high point of “The Future.”
  I was pretty impressed with the Sands/Priest scene in “Hunger.” Richard Brody was­n’t, see­ing no reas­on for McQueen not to cut. The long take was of course enabled by tech­no­lo­gic­al advances, so I kind of see that and McQueen’s sensibilities/interests work­ing in tandem.
  This is all grist for a poten­tial sep­ar­ate post, which will be a while in com­ing because I have to really con­cen­trate on the next Blu-ray con­sumer guide now!

• lipranzer says:

  December 2, 2011 at 7:22 pm

  I had my prob­lems with HUNGER, but that long take of the Sands/Priest scene was­n’t one of them; I felt it worked with­in con­text, and I also think the long takes in SHAME work as well, par­tic­u­larly the scene between Fassbender and Nicole Beharie, as it just shows how tough it is for Fassbender’s char­ac­ter to make genu­ine human con­tact with someone. At any rate, I think SHAME is a much bet­ter movie than HUNGER, though I do think as good as Carey Mulligan is play­ing against type, her char­ac­ter could have been bet­ter developed.

• John M says:

  December 5, 2011 at 12:13 am

  Different strokes, indeed! Considering McQueen’s con­trolled aspir­a­tions, SHAME was per­haps the stu­pid­est film I saw all year. A film afraid of, or just unin­ter­ested in, its own beau­ti­ful char­ac­ters. (And their beauty is no small piece of dis­hon­esty: when a sex addict is por­trayed by one of the world’s sex­i­est men, well…boohoo? A less hand­some sex addict might have a bit more trouble star­ing women wet on the sub­way. McQueen throws that bit of ugly con­flict right out the window…because Fassbender fits the dong-suit, I guess…he looks so good next to an empty, white wall.)
  And reac­tion­ary to boot: the depths of sex addict hell por­trayed as a red-light gay encounter. On the cut­ting edge of 1978, this one. What on earth does McQueen think he’s say­ing here? Masturbating a lot and fuck­ing who­ever you want whenev­er you want and being a hand­some banker and watch­ing lots of porn isn’t always spir­itu­ally nour­ish­ing? Oh, and sex addicts have sis­ters? I’m still recov­er­ing from the rev­el­at­ory shock.
  Call me a “whiner,” Zach, because yeah, the film’s “dar­ing” is so over­pro­duced and obvi­ous (in a dull, dull way) I star­ted think­ing HUNGER had nev­er really been made.
  Like, just LOOK at that still above. He’s stand­ing in a lobby! Waiting for an elev­at­or! Looking down! Can you stand it? The Manhattan empti­ness of it all?!
  Again, to Glenn et al (I think Lex G’s a fan), dif­fer­ent strokes, etc. etc. But this one really irked me. (And I do like Fassbender…when he has some­thing to do.)
  If any­one’s inter­ested, a couple reviews I found myself nod­ding to:
  http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/notebook-reviews-steve-mcqueens-shame
  http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/steve-mcqueens-arty-sex-film-shame/Content?oid=5097223

• Steve says:

  December 5, 2011 at 7:10 pm

  I’m with John M. The frus­trat­ing thing about SHAME is that it still shows many traces of the tal­ent that was so evid­ent in HUNGER: fine per­form­ances, appeal­ing cine­ma­to­graphy, two stand-out scenes. (If you’ve seen the film, you an prob­ably guess which ones I’m refer­ring to.) But ulti­mately, the film is a fail­ure, marred by a vis­ion of New York life that sug­gests AMERICAN PSYCHO minus the satir­ic­al edge, dumb “ambigu­ous” hints that incest caused Brandon’s sex addic­tion and a gen­er­al con­ser­vat­ism impli­cit in the title and expli­cit in the depic­tion of gay sex and three-ways as Brandon’s bot­tom­ing out. When Brandon expresses qualms about the real­ist­ic pro­spects of lifelong mono­gamy, the film seems to see this as part of his patho­logy, but I think he has a point, at least for some people.

• Lex says:

  December 6, 2011 at 2:00 am

  SPOILER if any­one cares, but as to the last post…
  David Poland’s been on this “incest!” kick since the fest­ivals, but the movie is ambigu­ous… BUT my read on it was that the sis­ter and most prob­ably Brandon had been abused as chil­dren, and Brandon’s resent­ment and self-hatred is in part a res­ult of fail­ing to pro­tect her when they were young, from pre­sum­ably the par­ent who was molest­ing her and per­haps both of them. What the movie gets SPOT ON is the way that kind of thing– and early expos­ure to sex in gen­er­al– at too young an age warps someone’s spir­it and col­ors their rela­tion­ships for life; The way Brandon can­’t per­form with a nice “nor­mal” girl vs imme­di­ately call­ing up a hook­er speaks volumes about how sex for abuse vic­tims or people with fucked-up child­hoods HAS to be made to be dirty, illi­cit, riddled with guilt and, er, shame (zing.)
  It is a fuller cine­mat­ic exper­i­ence, to me, than HUNGER, which seemed like a lumpy movie of three mis­shapen thirds, each inter­est­ing but they did­n’t really con­geal. This one is top-to-bottom of a piece, of a mood… and the sup­port­ing per­form­ance of James Badge Dale as the ulti­mate Herb Tarlek-type swingin’ mar­ried office guy unleashed is almost as thor­ough as GOD FASSBENDER’S portrayal.
  I think it is maybe the strongest movie of 2011, or tied with TAKE SHELTER.