Over the weekend I finally got to see Shame, director Steve McQueen’s compulsive-sextravaganza of a movie that has provoked its way into much recent critical comment and dumb, awkward A-list inter-ribbing. It’s kind of a pointless flick! Apart from the vintage-1990s thrill of seeing an NC-17 picture in a theater for the first time, I guess my vulgar generation’s ways have left me so numb to sexual extremity that the few cinematographically impeccable shots of toned bodies humping—oh so desperately, as though they can’t seem to feel—are just pretty boring, laying flatly in the frame amidst the tastefully spare, gunmetal sheen of the production design. Shame takes place in a fantastical, grown-ups-only version of New York where grime and asymmetry don’t exist; even a crimson-tinted gay sex parlor looks like a MoMA exhibit. The thing just isn’t affecting in the way it thinks it is. While I don’t want to get too much into it, I’ll point out that one especially emblematic example of how it fails to sell its sex-is-pain motif is that—unlike in Alfonso Cuarón’s fearless erotic parable Y tu mamá también—we never see any semen. The only truly unsettlingly graphic scenes involve no sex, and two other bodily fluids.
The essence of the commentary I referred to can be boiled down to two pieces, one by New Yorker grumble-master David Denby that asserts, conclusively, that “Shame is borderline absurd,” and that criticism of its aesthetic elements and non-sexual plot deficiencies “are comically besides the point” (Denby has spoken). The other is by the equally venerable Glenn Kenny—writing, weirdly, for The A.V. Club—who pokes holes in all the mockery by invoking the apparently unassailable tenets of universal addict-dom: “the point that Brandon’s mental and spiritual condition may tend to undermine all the physical/material trappings of his existence is lost on Denby.” Snap! Appropriately for a conversation about Shame, the debate plays out like a critical-vigor dick measuring contest—which advanced age white man can out-snarl the other on the topic of authentic fuck habits? Neither non-review engages centrally with the film’s actual narrative nor takes issue with the central performance of Michael Fassbender—nor, it seems, do any of the prominent negative reviews compiled on Rotten Tomatoes. As phony as it all gets, we’re told, the actor—graphic pissing scene and all—remains suitably dignified.
The Oscar nominations will be announced tomorrow at an event sure to be described by Hollywood reporters as “having occurred,” and Fassbender, as our Irish-NewJersian hero Brandon Sullivan, is considered a lock for a Best Actor position. But all of the ballyhoo over whether his character’s ordeal is truly poignant rather than just lurid (these critics don’t usually express feelings toward movies besides either “hug” or “hmmph”) has just served to obfuscate the truth of the matter, which is that he is simply miscast in the role. Fassbender is a fairly magnetic actor with a strong enough chin to eventually reach Matt Damonian heights of crossover appeal, but I didn’t buy him for a second as Sullivan. He plays it the same way he did Magneto in X-Men: First Class: all steely, gloomy resignation, which works for that role—a comic-book “complex” villain who can make forks and coins fly around, whoa. But in Shame there’s something about him too single-minded, too sleek and straight-ahead, that doesn’t jibe with any concept or portrait of addiction that I would call close to “convincing”. Not that I could think of an actor who could make this dully spare (“artistic”) screenplay totally work. Pardon me if I’m wrong, sex-havers, but behaviorally, it seems ridiculous that he is supposed to have a prolonged envelopment in a sea of paid sexual indulgences (a pattern whose apex we see without having prior seen it affect his life in any way) yet always has the on-the-rails game to ensnare beautiful chicks just by posing at them. I didn’t see Fassbender’s first collabo with McQueen, the prison protest biopic Hunger, though I hear he had to starve himself and play with his own shit or something in that, so I’m assuming his casting in Shame—given that all the women this supposed do-anything addict fucks around with are, ridiculously, supermodel-beautiful—was basically a “thanks, bro” from one grande artiste to another.
For a counterpoint, watch Sam Rockwell in Clark Gregg’s Choke, from 2007. While itself a far-from-great film that tries too hard to maintain effective satire, Rockwell’s performance as a sex addict is far more affecting than Fassbender’s. There are a bunch of straw men I could set up for myself here as to why I find it to be so: Rockwell is stereotypically scruffy and weasel-like rather than perfectly, icily chic, and we’re actually privy to the childhood trauma that damaged him. (Choke, a Chuck Palahniuk adaptation, suffers, if anything, from over-sharing where Shame is one of those art films determined to be selective and mysterious about its characters’ motivations.) But I don’t think that I think, truly, that only certain types of people can be sex addicts. I think it’s more that the Gregg film shows us a man who, while dysfunctional, is at least a complete person with diverse activities. McQueen doesn’t even want us to know what Sullivan does in his perfect glass-and-chrome office. He is represented only as the enactment of his desires, which, as anybody obsessed with something could tell you, is only part of the story, and it’s a story that Shame’s creators couldn’t be bothered to finish thinking up.
The essence of the commentary I referred to can be boiled down to two pieces, one by New Yorker grumble-master David Denby that asserts, conclusively, that “Shame is borderline absurd,” and that criticism of its aesthetic elements and non-sexual plot deficiencies “are comically besides the point” (Denby has spoken). The other is by the equally venerable Glenn Kenny—writing, weirdly, for The A.V. Club—who pokes holes in all the mockery by invoking the apparently unassailable tenets of universal addict-dom: “the point that Brandon’s mental and spiritual condition may tend to undermine all the physical/material trappings of his existence is lost on Denby.” Snap! Appropriately for a conversation about Shame, the debate plays out like a critical-vigor dick measuring contest—which advanced age white man can out-snarl the other on the topic of authentic fuck habits? Neither non-review engages centrally with the film’s actual narrative nor takes issue with the central performance of Michael Fassbender—nor, it seems, do any of the prominent negative reviews compiled on Rotten Tomatoes. As phony as it all gets, we’re told, the actor—graphic pissing scene and all—remains suitably dignified.
The Oscar nominations will be announced tomorrow at an event sure to be described by Hollywood reporters as “having occurred,” and Fassbender, as our Irish-NewJersian hero Brandon Sullivan, is considered a lock for a Best Actor position. But all of the ballyhoo over whether his character’s ordeal is truly poignant rather than just lurid (these critics don’t usually express feelings toward movies besides either “hug” or “hmmph”) has just served to obfuscate the truth of the matter, which is that he is simply miscast in the role. Fassbender is a fairly magnetic actor with a strong enough chin to eventually reach Matt Damonian heights of crossover appeal, but I didn’t buy him for a second as Sullivan. He plays it the same way he did Magneto in X-Men: First Class: all steely, gloomy resignation, which works for that role—a comic-book “complex” villain who can make forks and coins fly around, whoa. But in Shame there’s something about him too single-minded, too sleek and straight-ahead, that doesn’t jibe with any concept or portrait of addiction that I would call close to “convincing”. Not that I could think of an actor who could make this dully spare (“artistic”) screenplay totally work. Pardon me if I’m wrong, sex-havers, but behaviorally, it seems ridiculous that he is supposed to have a prolonged envelopment in a sea of paid sexual indulgences (a pattern whose apex we see without having prior seen it affect his life in any way) yet always has the on-the-rails game to ensnare beautiful chicks just by posing at them. I didn’t see Fassbender’s first collabo with McQueen, the prison protest biopic Hunger, though I hear he had to starve himself and play with his own shit or something in that, so I’m assuming his casting in Shame—given that all the women this supposed do-anything addict fucks around with are, ridiculously, supermodel-beautiful—was basically a “thanks, bro” from one grande artiste to another.
For a counterpoint, watch Sam Rockwell in Clark Gregg’s Choke, from 2007. While itself a far-from-great film that tries too hard to maintain effective satire, Rockwell’s performance as a sex addict is far more affecting than Fassbender’s. There are a bunch of straw men I could set up for myself here as to why I find it to be so: Rockwell is stereotypically scruffy and weasel-like rather than perfectly, icily chic, and we’re actually privy to the childhood trauma that damaged him. (Choke, a Chuck Palahniuk adaptation, suffers, if anything, from over-sharing where Shame is one of those art films determined to be selective and mysterious about its characters’ motivations.) But I don’t think that I think, truly, that only certain types of people can be sex addicts. I think it’s more that the Gregg film shows us a man who, while dysfunctional, is at least a complete person with diverse activities. McQueen doesn’t even want us to know what Sullivan does in his perfect glass-and-chrome office. He is represented only as the enactment of his desires, which, as anybody obsessed with something could tell you, is only part of the story, and it’s a story that Shame’s creators couldn’t be bothered to finish thinking up.
No comments:
Post a Comment