British director Steve McQueen’s 2008 cinematic debut, Hunger, about the obstinate Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender, Jane Eyre), who led a hunger strike from prison in the 1980s, depicted, with a brutal elegance, the violence surrounding the troubles in Northern Ireland, as well as the power of human will and fortitude, and its pitfalls.  McQueen’s latest effort, Shame, (also starring Fassbender in the lead role), paints an equally explicit and aesthetic portrait of a human condition that requires a similar type of obsession: addiction.

Fassbender plays Brandon Sullivan, a New York City sex addict, living a life that consists of masturbating and banging prostitutes and sometimes banging women who are not prostitutes.  That life becomes disrupted when his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan, Drive), who is not a prostitute and who he cannot fuck, unfortunately, makes a surprise visit for an indefinite stay.

First off, McQueen, who is a painter, has an excellent eye and the cinematography is stunning, both in Shame or Hunger, and I would recommend either film for that alone.  That and the audacity, the boundary-pushing of each film make them worth seeing, even if you’re not a fan of unconventional/art house film.  Each shot in Shame could be a painting, or a framed photo.  And when people aren’t shoving their genitals into one another, McQueen depicts an aesthetically pleasing visual-feast of human nature, solitude and a big, cold city.  For art connoisseurs like me, you’ll know that means there are a lot of shots where a lone figure is on either the right or left side of the frame, and on the other two-thirds of the screen there is a bunch of blurry shit and pretty lights.  Although I wouldn’t expect commoners like you to know that.

The synopsis is all I had going into the movie, and I wish I didn’t even have that much, because the slow-moving Shame hits you with several small, subtle surprises aimed to gradually unravel the layers of the characters.  The first little shocker in Shame is that Sissy is Brandon’s sister.  Of course, it’s spelled out clearly on the movie’s synopsis, but their first interactions together, before anyone even mentions the word sister, have sexual undertones, and I probably wouldn’t have guessed they were related.  That uncomfortable sexual tension continues throughout the movie, and I think that’s the point.  It seems the title refers to not only the sexual addiction Brandon suffers from, but also an incestuous secret hidden between Brandon and Sissy.  (Well half-incestuous, as it is inferred that Brandon is probably Sissy’s adopted or half-brother).  Those things contribute to the repressed pain, bitterness, detachment, and a deep shame, all evident in Fassbender’s remarkable performance.  While I can guess at this, I can never know.  The story is ambiguous, and the audience is left with trusting its own instincts and interpretations.  McQueen has a knack for having his characters wander around morosely and let the audience become more and more savvy as to their intentions and the situations they’re in, while never fully explaining.  It’s just good filmmaking.

With the film scoring an NC-17 rating, one must ask the question: Is all of this sexually explicit content necessary?  The answer, I think, is yes and no.  The “no” highlighting a flaw in the film.  McQueen never shies away from gritty realism – and I mean really real realism.  However, in Shame, McQueen seemed to just throw in some awesome genitals for the hell of it.  Because if it’s already NC-17, why the fuck not?  Don’t get me wrong – I love awesome genitals.  Especially seeing them in theaters, where I’m seated next to a solitary man in a pea coat, who shifts uncomfortably in his chair while breathing heavily, and several times accidentally places his hand delicately on my forearm while letting out a languid sigh.  But it’s just a few scenes that I couldn’t help question if they were needed.  They took me out of the film and seemed to take away from McQueen’s tenacious art.

Maybe I’m too much of a prude.  Maybe I’m not near artistic enough to understand the importance of things.  Or maybe those scenes just appear awkward to me, because every time I a sex scene pops up in a public screening, I have war-like flashbacks of sex scenes that would occur during movies I watched with my parents as a child.  Where I’d break out in a cold sweat, stare unblinking into the distance, remain paralyzed and pray for a natural disaster to consume our home, leaving no survivors to look one another awkwardly in the eye ever again.  Maybe that’s it.

But even with those few unwarranted scenes, much of the sexual content was indeed relevant, and if this were a less talented filmmaker, we may have room for complaint.  But it’s Steven Fucking McQueen!  One specific scene – and one of my favorites – toward the end of the film puts Brandon in a threesome, or foursome.  I couldn’t really count the body parts.  His face as he approaches climax can be mistaken for ecstasy or tearful regret.  We all know the jokes about the hilarity of men’s orgasm faces, and out of context, it’s just a shot of a guy fucking.  But in McQueen’s artistic hands, it’s a meaningful visual that encompasses the inner struggle of addiction, and the shame, humiliation and obsession that goes with it.  And it underscores, much like the rest of the movie does, the illicit world in which Brandon lives – a modern New York City filled with ways to reach easy gratification, through prostitution, the Internet and even the scantily clad models posing on the city’s advertisements.  Of course, I don’t know if we needed to see him give that blonde a rim job.  We really just wanted to see it.

Another small flaw is with McQueen’s “unblinking” shots (where the camera doesn’t cut away for a number of minutes).  One scene in Hunger runs 15 minutes, without any cut away.  Just two actors talking at a table for a quarter of an hour, and yet you hung on every word.  Generally, this trademark of his is very effective, and, during a couple of those unblinking shots in Shame, I caught myself staring, equally unblinkingly, with mouth agape, lost in the story.  A couple other scenes, however, seemed too drawn out, if unwarranted, taking me again out of the movie, and had me questioning the director’s style and motives.

I can’t help but constantly compare Shame (perhaps unprofessionally) to McQueen’s debut, Hunger, which is similar thematically and stylistically, and somewhat better.  With Hunger, McQueen struck a very good balance between pushing boundaries of what audiences will tolerate and keeping audiences engaged.  In Shame, it seems he tilts the scale just past the edge of those boundaries, if only slightly.  Don’t get me wrong though; Shame is an impressive piece of cinema.  If I were you, I’d go see it while it’s out, if only to show mom and dad that you can get through a sex scene without fantasizing about mass annihilation of your loved ones.  Or to experience, through excellent performances, awesome style and arresting cinematography, the debilitating effects of addiction in a world where kinks, fetishes and any other form of addiction, is right at a person’s fingertips. One of those.