For "Shame"

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• bill says:

  January 12, 2012 at 10:13 am

  Oh heav­ens.

• Claire Kenny says:

  January 12, 2012 at 10:17 am

  For some reas­on, am bey­ond affron­ted by the com­menter who feels like he needs to explain to you, “a Chicago writer,” what the 1÷2÷3 train is *really* like. GLENN KENNY KNOWS FROM THE NEW YORK SUBWAY SYSTEM, MISTER.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 12, 2012 at 10:22 am

  Funny thing is, Fassbender nev­er even TAKES the 1÷2÷3, it’s always the N or R. But thanks for stick­ing up for my sub­way acu­men, honey.

• Oliver_C says:

  January 12, 2012 at 11:06 am

  Yes, but what do Fluttershy, Zodiac Motherfucker and Tarkovsky’s Former AD have to say? 😉

• R D says:

  January 12, 2012 at 11:20 am

  Maybe re-title the art­icle “What Steve McQueen Gets Right About Addiction” and cross-publish in Slate?

• David Ehrenstein says:

  January 12, 2012 at 11:22 am

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyaVt0dcrjY

• Brian Dauth says:

  January 12, 2012 at 11:45 am

  My prob­lem with the film was that it applied the beha­vi­or­al mark­ers of addict­ive beha­vi­or as found in addic­tions such as alcoholism/substance abuse to high fre­quency sexu­al desire which might be a) a com­pul­sion rather than an addic­tion or b) neither an addic­tion nor a compulsion.
  The trick­i­ness of Brandon’s final des­cent to same-sex sex – hit­ting bot­tom in addic­tion speak – plays out dif­fer­ently depend­ing on an indi­vidu­al view­er­’s take on high fre­quency sexu­al beha­vi­or (my hus­band is train­ing to be a psy­cho­lo­gist spe­cial­iz­ing in sex­ology and has con­vinced me over many con­ver­sa­tions that the addic­tion mod­el is not the right one. I still hold out for a dia­gnos­is of com­puls­ive beha­vi­or, but his research leads him to believe it is neither. Instead it is a cul­tur­al prob­lem about how sex is stig­mat­ized in order to con­trol its manifestation).
  Since McQueen presents high fre­quency sexu­al beha­vi­or in the guise of an addic­tion, I am not sur­prised that view­ers who have addict­ive per­son­al­it­ies and/or exper­i­enced addic­tion will con­nect with the mark­ers he deploys.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 12, 2012 at 11:59 am

  Those are inter­est­ing points, Brian, and I’ll try not to take the con­des­cen­sion in which they’re couched per­son­ally. You may note, how­ever, that in my read­ing of the film, Brandon’s last-act for­ay is con­sidered not as a bot­tom but as a binge, one whose com­pon­ents are not unfa­mil­i­ar to Brandon. The movie’s end­ing leaves the ques­tion as to wheth­er he’s truly hit bot­tom unset­tlingly open. To me at least, it looks as if he’s start­ing anoth­er loop.

• Brian Dauth says:

  January 12, 2012 at 12:16 pm

  One more thought: since my per­son­al­ity leans towards com­pul­sion rather than addic­tion, I would not feel an affin­ity – scary or oth­er­wise – with the char­ac­ter and his situ­ation. I would not say that laughter is the most fruit­ful response to the film; but I would aver that if one does not accept the film’s premise that sex is an addic­tion, then a chasm opens up between spec­tat­or and art­work that all the finest mise en scene and per­form­ances can­not bridge.
  Also, if one believes that McQueen gets the addiction/compulsion ques­tion wrong, this dis­con­nect allows a view­er the oppor­tun­ity to look for all the oth­er things that he gets “wrong” in the movie, since there is no “buy-in” to the film’s world at the most basic level.

• Matos says:

  January 12, 2012 at 12:24 pm

  I’m neither a psy­cho­lo­gist spe­cial­iz­ing in sex­ology nor to my know­ledge an addict of any kind (it’d be totally taste­less and cal­low to joke about addic­tion to Dave Kehr’s blogroll, right?). That said, Brian’s com­ment gets at what I found shal­low and dis­ap­point­ing about the movie. McQueen’s under­stand­ing of his prot­ag­on­ist’s situ­ation is that “addic­tion is addic­tion” – I know that’s from an inter­view, but I think that’s the por­trait in the movie as well. This may res­ult in a power­ful depic­tion of sub­stance addic­tion, with sex serving as a kind of place­hold­er for booze or drugs; one way to read Glenn’s touch­ing Onion piece is as cel­eb­rat­ing a movie that cap­tures the real­ity of alco­hol­ism. But I guess from what I’ve seen of people whose com­puls­ive (in the ver­nacu­lar sense) high-frequency sexu­al beha­vi­or has highly neg­at­ive impacts on their lives, “addic­tion is addic­tion” is a lazily inac­cur­ate way of under­stand­ing what’s going on.

• warren oates says:

  January 12, 2012 at 12:28 pm

  If, like you say, some­thing like tra­di­tion­al dra­mat­ic cath­arsis was the film’s goal, then it failed utterly for me because of poor dra­mat­ic con­struc­tion. The prob­lem isn’t that addicts in real life some­times go from point Z to point Z, stuck in an end­less self-hating rut of binging, the prob­lem is that movie stor­ies need some kind of arc. Even the most des­per­ate and down and out prot­ag­on­ists (think TAXI DRIVER or LEAVING LAS VEGAS even) have to want things and do things that bring them into con­flict with oth­er char­ac­ters in the story. Imagine if SHAME had star­ted with that din­ner date scene, maybe the best scene in the film, and we’d really thought he might be able to fall in love and this had played out for long enough to make us care? As far as I can tell, Brandon has noth­ing to lose the whole time, noth­ing he wants, tries to get or risks any­thing for. He’d already giv­en up on his sis­ter before she arrives and he’s so emo­tion­ally closed off the entire time that we can­’t really known what he’s feel­ing. And the final con­triv­ance with the sis­ter­’s wrist slit­ting at the end is so silly it belongs in a Lifetime movie.
  Let’s be real about the pro­ced­ur­al details for a minute. I have to agree with Anthony Lane about those porn mags – retro and not believ­able. Not to men­tion how Brandon gets caught by his boss at work with porn all over his com­pany hard drive – is he the only male under 40 who’s nev­er heard of “clear history”(not to men­tion that he seems to work in a glass office sit­ting right across the table from anoth­er guy…so how does her jerk off in there again???). Too many of the details seem thought­lessly lar­ded onto the scen­ario to pump up the psy­cho­lo­gic­al back­story without any real con­sid­er­a­tion of how exactly any of this might have played out.
  But what really made me hate the film vir­u­lently were the pre­ten­sions to deep­er mean­ing, like when Brandon gets an inner life cour­tesy of Glenn Gould play­ing J.S. Bach on his iPod while he runs off a con­fu­sion boner in a Chantal Akerman long take.
  I’m not say­ing it’s not pos­sible to make an art film like the one Glenn describes (like the one I wish I’d seen), where the hell of com­pul­sion is a kind of end­less secret tor­ment, it’s just that SHAME def­in­itely isn’t it.
  (Oh by the way, some­body should tell McQueen that it’s only okay to bite on fam­ous titles when your film is actu­ally good. What’s next for him, 8 1/2?)

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 12, 2012 at 12:31 pm

  Not to jump down your throat, @warren oates, but “some­thing like tra­di­tion­al dra­mat­ic cath­arsis was the film’s goal” is exactly what I DID NOT say.

• warren oates says:

  January 12, 2012 at 12:41 pm

  Sorry. You’re totally right. Okay, sure, then empathy instead of cath­arsis. But if it’s just empathy for Brandon’s silent suf­fer­ing and no cath­artic arc that McQueen is after, why is the film 90 plus minutes instead of 10–15 minutes of, say, a single scene of Brandon res­ist­ing his addic­tion once and then giv­ing into it? Wouldn’t that be enough for mere empathy? How does all this time we spend with some­body who does­n’t change (or isn’t even offered an actu­al chance to change that he messes up) paid off?

• John Gall says:

  January 12, 2012 at 12:55 pm

  I am a reg­u­lar read­er of this blog but I am sign­ing in under a pseud­onym to pro­tect my pri­vacy. I am a sex addict. I have been in recov­ery for 10 years. I have had a com­puls­ive dis­order that makes me use sex as a means of escape since I was a teen­ager. It is an extremely destruct­ive, addict­ive set of beha­vi­ors that I have worked hard to learn to con­trol, but it is an addic­tion, no doubt about it. My beha­vi­or and though pat­terns when I am in my addic­tion mir­ror those of your typ­ic­al alco­hol­ic, drug addict, or com­puls­ive gam­bler. I have nearly des­troyed my life with this addic­tion, and I’m lucky to have some­thing approach­ing a nor­mal life today as a res­ult of finally under­stand­ing how to man­age and medi­ate my addiction.
  I have worked with a num­ber of skilled and highly-trained psy­chi­at­rists who spe­cial­ized in addict­ive dis­orders, and none of them have ever debated the real­ity of sex addic­tion with me. If you under­stood what I have been through, and what I’ve wit­nessed from the hun­dreds of people I’ve met in treat­ment, your con­clu­sions might be different.
  Those that claim sex addic­tion does­n’t exist are simply in deni­al. Would you call alco­hol­ism a “high-frequency drink­ing beha­vi­or?” You could demean any addic­tion simply by couch­ing it between “high-frequency” and “beha­vi­or.” It’s an absurd semant­ic argu­ment. Whether I use alco­hol, cocaine, gambling, or mas­turb­a­tion to unlock a spe­cif­ic set of chem­ic­als in my brain in order to escape the high and lows of every­day life, the end I’m try­ing to achieve remains exactly the same.
  But because of this con­stant deni­al, those of us suf­fer­ing from it con­tin­ue to hide in plain sight, because to acknow­ledge our issues invites skep­ti­cism, dis­missal, even out­right hostility.
  @Brian: Your hus­band is wel­come to his the­ory, but his the­ory is not my real­ity. You’re speak­ing of some­thing you clearly know little about, and I find it rather insulting.
  The prob­lem with the film as I see it is that many view­ers are either ignor­ant of sex addic­tion or they assume it does­n’t exist. McQueen shows rather than tells, and the view­er is left to draw their own con­clu­sions. Many seem to think Brandon is *just* over-sexed, but Brandon’s com­puls­ive beha­vi­or extends well bey­ond just try­ing to bed women. If a per­son responds to bad news by mas­turb­at­ing as Brandon does, that implies that his beha­vi­or stems from some­thing more ser­i­ous than simply “chas­ing tail” as some people have described it. How many people get bad news at work and respond by retreat­ing to the bath­room to mas­turb­ate? Does that seem remotely nor­mal or acceptable?
  I won­der if Brandon were depic­ted hit­ting a more obvi­ous bot­tom and then seek­ing help, with an expert explain­ing sex addic­tion and qual­i­fy­ing Brandon’s beha­vi­or for him and the audi­ence, would that make this a bet­ter film? It might make this film more pal­at­able to those who are ignor­ant of sex addic­tion, but I don’t think it would neces­sar­ily improve it.

• warren oates says:

  January 12, 2012 at 1:28 pm

  Has any­one seen Caveh Zahedi’s I AM A SEX ADDICT, which gets at all these issues much more effectively?
  I believe everything Glenn and John Gall write about their addic­tions, but I still think SHAME is a ter­rible film. I liked HUNGER very much and hope the obvi­ously tal­en­ted McQueen will have a bet­ter script next time around.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 12, 2012 at 1:38 pm

  It’s been a long time since I saw the Zahedi film, but my impres­sion of it, or my recol­lec­tion of my impres­sion of it, is that it’s too coy and faux-ingratiating by half, at least. But I was in a some­what dif­fer­ent place then, so I might want to check it out again…except that I’ve con­tin­ued to balk at Zahedi’s pro­voca­tions in the inter­im. We’ll see. In any case (not that I’m try­ing to shut down the dis­cus­sion), Mr. Oates and I are gonna have to agree to dis­agree for the nonce.

• Brian says:

  January 12, 2012 at 3:47 pm

  Just for the record, loved the piece and always happy to see you writ­ing lengthy pieces. Will this be a reg­u­lar thing for you on AVClub?

• Claire K. says:

  January 12, 2012 at 6:03 pm

  @John Gall–I think part of the reas­on that people feel dis­in­clined to con­sider sex addic­tion a “real” addic­tion is because of the per­cep­tion (accur­ate or no) that people who are…mmm…disinclined to mono­gamy will call them­selves sex addicts as a way of excus­ing more garden-variety bad beha­vi­or. (Though of course con­sid­er­ing one’s addic­tion some kind of free pass to do whatever one wants is a clear sign that one is not ready to actu­ally address the addic­tion, anyway.)
  But then that does­n’t explain why there are psy­cho­lo­gic­al pro­fes­sion­als around who also don’t con­sider this addic­tion “real,” which con­fuses me, too. Maybe they’re equat­ing addic­tion with phys­ic­al depend­ency? Which isn’t really accurate–one might be able to with­draw from one’s addict­ive beha­vi­or without leth­al side effects, but that does­n’t mean that the beha­vi­or does­n’t trig­ger the same dopam­ine reac­tions that keep a addict’s brain hooked.

• Zach says:

  January 12, 2012 at 6:37 pm

  @ Brian Dauth: I’m won­der­ing what you under­stand the dif­fer­ence to be, exactly, between addic­tion and com­pul­sion. Is this some new devel­op­ment of the psy­cho­lo­gic­al lex­icon, or am I miss­ing some­thing that the dic­tion­ary does­n’t explain?

• Zach says:

  January 12, 2012 at 7:12 pm

  Also, Glenn: A great, acute piece. I hope you do more like it. I still haven’t seen SHAME, but I’ve taken your com­ments on it to heart, and look for­ward to view­ing the film.

• D says:

  January 12, 2012 at 8:01 pm

  I apo­lo­gize Glenn. I did not mean to be condescending.
  John: I did not mean to insult you, but I have my opin­ion and my hus­band has trained under psy­chi­at­rists who dis­agree with you. And yes, I have mas­turb­ated at work (and oth­er places) when I received bad news, and I con­sider it per­fectly nor­mal to do so (as nor­mal as choos­ing to chew a stick of gum when I get some bad news). Masturbation is a won­der­ful stress reliev­er, and after my self-pleasuring, I went on about my busi­ness. I write more below about the prob­lem­at­ic notion of estab­lish­ing norm­at­ives when it comes to sexu­al­ity and its mani­fest­a­tions. Also, it seems to me that you are equat­ing the term “com­puls­ive beha­vi­or” with “addic­tion.” I do think that sex can become a com­puls­ive beha­vi­or (like hand-washing and many oth­er beha­vi­ors), but I still believe it is not an addiction.
  As a queer, I am leery of any approach that patho­lo­gizes sexu­al beha­vi­or and tries to present it as an addic­tion. Glenn: I think it is great that you were one of the few crit­ics to see how the hit-bottom moment can be seen as homo­phobic, but McQueen’s approach also leads you to observe that “Brandon does­n’t have sex like nor­mal people.” How do nor­mal people have sex? The major­ity of my life has been spent fight­ing against the notion of norm­at­ive sexu­al beha­vi­or. I am sure that if I asked you if there was such a thing as nor­mal sexu­al beha­vi­or, you would say “No.” And yet, the terms of McQueen’s work cause you to write as if there were such a thing that could be quantified.
  For example: I came out young enough to exper­i­ence a pre-AIDS gay world. Life was won­der­ful. I could have quick sex on the way to work/school; dur­ing lunch; and after work/school. I could incor­por­ate into my daily routine stops for sex – some­times I was lucky in the sub­way bath­room at 42^nd Street and 6^th Avenue (one of the best along with West 4^th Street) and some­times not. But I stayed for as long as I liked and then headed off for my des­tin­a­tion. There was no addic­tion; just a non-normative way of incor­por­at­ing sex into my life. A heroin addict needs his fix; an alco­hol­ic needs her drink. The object of addic­tion causes bio­lo­gic­al changes in a per­son that leads to crav­ings. All the sex I had caused no changes to my body akin to those brought about by using heroin or drink­ing. The object of an addic­tion gives rise to the addic­tion. Compulsive beha­vi­or fixes on a beha­vi­or (hand-washing or mas­turb­at­ing) and mani­fests itself through that beha­vi­or. But wash­ing your hands or mas­turb­at­ing does not lead to an addic­tion the way smoking crack cocaine can. A per­son can become com­puls­ive with regard to sex, but there are not bio­lo­gic­al alterations.
  Sex is a beha­vi­or that many people wish to patho­lo­gize. It is one of many thou­sands of beha­vi­ors that people can become com­puls­ive about. But these oth­er beha­vi­ors are rarely referred to as addic­tions. But sexu­al com­pul­sion is termed as an addic­tion in cul­tur­al dis­course so that it can be lumped togeth­er with oth­er addic­tions and – more import­antly – the oppro­bri­um they eli­cit from people. Avoid heroin – you will become addicted! Don’t have sex – you will become addicted.
  John: I would guess that under­stand­ing your­self as a sex addict has helped you, and that the valid­ity of that nar­rat­ive is import­ant to you. I am sorry that you take my dis­agree­ment with your dis­course as an insult. I have my own dis­courses: I am a queer, fab­ulous, sexu­ally adven­tur­ous man. There are hun­dreds of thou­sands of people whose nar­rat­ive of my life would read oth­er­wise: in their eyes I am a degen­er­ate per­vert who will­fully cor­rupts God’s plan for human­ity. Should I feel that they have insul­ted me because they do not see my life as I do? No. People are allowed their own dis­courses. Your truth is your truth. My dis­agree­ment with your dis­course can­not alter that truth, any more than the dis­courses of gay-bashers and queer haters alters the truth of my narrative.

• D says:

  January 12, 2012 at 8:05 pm

  The above post is by Brian Dauth. I could not get it post no mat­ter how many times I pas­ted it in the box. In the past, I have relied on the good graces of Glenn to post my replies when they did not take, but not want­ing to both­er him again, I tried log­ging in through yahoo and it worked. Why I became “D” in the pro­cess I have no idea.

• Claire K. says:

  January 12, 2012 at 9:47 pm

  @Brian Dauth (D), though I share your dis­may at our cul­ture’s tend­ency to patho­lo­gize all but the most nar­row range of sexu­al beha­vi­or, it does­n’t fol­low that sexu­al­ity is there­fore entirely exempt from patho­logy. I can­’t think of a single basic beha­vi­or or bio­lo­gic­al pro­cess (eat­ing, sleep­ing, cell growth) that lacks the poten­tial to present as a patho­logy (anor­ex­ia, sleep­walk­ing, can­cer), so why would sex be any dif­fer­ent? While your non-normative sexu­al beha­vi­or sounds like it’s brought enjoy­ment and adven­ture to your life, John Gall’s sexu­al drives sound like they made his life unman­age­able and unhappy, which is a hall­mark of addic­tion. There’s no indic­a­tion that he’s “term[ing] his beha­vi­or an addiction…so that it can be lumped togeth­er with oth­er addic­tions and…the oppro­bri­um they eli­cit from people.” There’s no attempt there to neg­ate or mar­gin­al­ize *your* sexu­al­ity. He seems to me to be tak­ing issue with YOUR neg­a­tion of HIS.

• Victor Morton says:

  January 12, 2012 at 10:19 pm

  “There are hun­dreds of [mil­lions, FTFY] of people whose nar­rat­ive of my life would read oth­er­wise: in their eyes I am a degen­er­ate per­vert who will­fully cor­rupts God’s plan for human­ity. Should I feel that they have insul­ted me because they do not see my life as I do? No. People are allowed their own dis­courses. Your truth is your truth. My dis­agree­ment with your dis­course can­not alter that truth, any more than the dis­courses of gay-bashers and queer haters alters the truth of my narrative.”
  Sorry, I’m call­ing bovine scato­logy on that – as chem­ic­ally pure a case of school­book relativ­ism as I have ever seen.
  There is noway nohow a stat­ist­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of gays would not “feel … insul­ted” by being called “a degen­er­ate per­vert who will­fully cor­rupts God’s plan for human­ity.” There is noway nohow a stat­ist­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of gays would respond that “people are allowed their own dis­courses” and that “dis­agree­ment with [the gay-bashers’] dis­course can­not alter that truth.” And I really really REALLY doubt that if I were to say to you IRL that you were “a degen­er­ate per­vert who will­fully cor­rupts God’s plan for human­ity,” that you’d be so sanguine.

• I.B. says:

  January 13, 2012 at 6:11 am

  Noway nohow on worst­ward ho is it for noth­ing dis­jecta ill said expelled what where without words pricks.
  My apologies.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  January 13, 2012 at 9:49 am

  “Sex is a beha­vi­or that many people wish to pathologize.”
  BINGO!
  “Shame” presents its anti-hero from the very first shot as a dam­aged indi­vidu­al. He’s lying there before us in bed in obvi­ous dis­tress. What hap­pens as the film pro­gresses does­n’t make things any bet­ter for him. Most telling­ingly he can­’t per­form with a very atract­ive and pleas­ant woman (who finds him desir­able) after going out on a date with her. Relationships are an impossib­il­ity for him. He wants bod­ies to fuck and noth­ing more.
  Happy to say I’ve enjoyed a lot of cas­u­al sex in my time but nev­er in so dehu­man­ized a fash­ion – even at the Baths or in the Rambles.
  Going to a gay sex club to do it with anoth­er guy is indeed presen­ted by the film as “rock bot­tom” – his tree-way with a pair of hook­ers being a step “back up” as it were. The men are in dark­ness – the women in full, blind­ing light.
  Fassbender has a nice cock, but McQueen nev­er shows it erect.
  FAIL!

• The Siren says:

  January 13, 2012 at 11:04 am

  It’s so lovely to have Claire here. Wanted to say that, so maybe she will come back more often.
  And by the way, Claire, I also read–OK, skimmed–that AV Club thread, which would kill Emily Post if she wer­en’t safely dead already. And just like you, the single com­ment that made me right­eously angry on Glenn’s behalf was the one alleging that he does­n’t know what the sub­ways are like. 1974, my foot!!

• Claire K. says:

  January 13, 2012 at 2:27 pm

  Oh, thank you, Siren! I do my share of lurking-without-commenting, but some­times I get an urge to pipe up. 🙂
  And yes…I star­ted to skim the AV Club com­ments thread, and found it all just too dis­pir­it­ing. I thank you for join­ing me in my sub­way indignation!

• hersuzanne says:

  January 18, 2012 at 3:19 pm

  wow. Glenn i love your piece . And i love this thread. As a cinephile who is also an addict (not a sex addict though..just good old coke and heroin!) , i have not found any blogs or reviews or cinephile friends to share my take on this film until now. I am in recov­ery (i have a little over 11.5 yrs) While I ‘ve nev­er suffered any sex addiction(or “Sex Love Addiction” as many of my friends in the rooms call it) I have cer­tainly fel­low­shipped with a lot of people who are afflic­ted. For the people in this thread who waste time arguing wheth­er it is just com­pul­sion (fyi…big symp­tom of dis­ease of addic­tion is obssess­ive think­ing lead­ing to com­puls­ive beha­vi­ors) or a dis­ease, my response is who gives a shit? this is all besides the point. I’m leav­ing the big decisions up to the AMA. In the mean­time, I saw a lot of truth about Addiction (drugs and sex and oth­er­wise) in this film, and it only lost me in some of the odder, less authen­t­ic feel­ing tan­gents, like much of the Carey Mulligan stuff and the way the film ended up pun­ish­ing both of it’s suf­fer­ers for their trans­gres­sions and for their dis(ease(s).
  This film is worth­while alone for three things: 1) the hon­esty in the run that Fassbender’s char­ac­ter bursts out in …the semb­lance of a yuppy jog­ger­’s con­trol betrayed by the time of nite and the use of exer­cise as ther­apy in des­per­ate attempt to phys­ic­ally move past dif­fi­cult feelings/ attempt to keep one­self from con­tinu­ing cer­tain destruct­ive behaviors…2) the scene where Fassbender’s char­ac­ter quickly throws out all his porn (i identi­fy with what Glenn wrote about this…i recall throw­ing out straws and half bags and maybe once as much as half a bundle of dope..) This is a great scene for phys­ic­ally depict­ing both the meas­ure of the weight of ‘shame’ for addicts. in much of act­ive addic­tion there is a back and forth between act­ing in pure deni­al and these small win­dows into the real­ity of how far down we’ve gone and how dis­con­nec­ted we truly are to our own behavior..how it exists in spite of and des­pite ourselves..and Fassbender and McQueen really cap­tured it in this scene…no easy feat. One could argue that the this sequence is one of those per­fect crys­tals, later expan­ded and dis­ten­ded in the long scene where he dates an actu­al friend . That third of the film really chron­icles how the charater is yo yoing between try­ing to con­trol his afflic­tion and then reverting…and all this is fueled by the shame occur­ring in those moments of clar­ity. 3) the sub­way scenes…these are PERFECT! i really do find SHAME flawed..but still SO worth­while for the afore­men­tioned reas­ons. i really hope more people can open their minds to this film…

• Graig says:

  January 18, 2012 at 9:21 pm

  Way late here but just wanted to say how much I enjoyed read­ing this piece. It made me wish I liked SHAME more, which too often (for me, any­way) was reduct­ive and broad when it should have been nuanced and spe­cif­ic, and with too many set-pieces that felt mannered and self-conscious. Still, Michael and Carey are giv­ing in their all, and Steve McQueen’s Manhattan is a gleam­ing and pretty thing, I wish the writ­ing was there. Anyway, I hope I get to see your byline at AV Club more in the new year.