Steve McQueen (UK, born 1969)

Shame (2011) 

(This review, written as part of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century, freely makes reference to other films from the same list and does not read as well when taken out of its original context. It is reproduced here only for the convenience of having a director’s works collected on the same page.)

When I was an hour into Shame, a film which is ostensibly about sex addiction, I was struck by how little sex there had actually been in it. There’s a scene where our principal character Brandon, played by Michael Fassbender, hires a prostitute, and he shows her to the bedroom, we see her undress, and that’s it- the camera cuts away, and the sex act is not shown. At another point, he has an encounter with another woman outside, up against a wall, but the scene is shot in shadow and both of them are fully clothed. Fassbender goes full-frontal in that first hour, and so does Carey Mulligan, playing his sister, but in both instances these nude scenes occur in naturalised, non-sexual contexts.

In the final forty minutes, however, the sex quotient is increased significantly and graphic scenes abound. The effect of this approach, I suppose, was to draw us into Brandon’s world before showing us the warts-and-all version of what his life as a sex addict was actually like. It’s an effective strategy, and it’s an effective film- a little too serious, perhaps, a little too devoid of hope or joy, but effective nonetheless.

This kind of mordant solemnity is evident from an early stage. Brandon frequents bars with his boss, who is ostensibly more obsessed with sex and women than Brandon is, and fancies himself a lothario. A scene in which the guy’s overbearing, try-hard pick-up techniques go pathetically unheeded, whilst one of his prospective conquests instead elects for his quiet, collected, relatively respectful wingman, could easily have been played for laughs, and indeed has been played for laughs in sitcoms such as New Girl, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, all of them direct spiritual successors of Friends. One of the purposes of Shame, then, could be said to highlight just how little verisimilitude that particular strain of pop culture actually has, and how tenuously it reflects genuine experience. I doubt that was McQueen’s principal aim, but still. People don’t generally go around being incredibly sassy and quipping every few seconds, and those that do will probably grow out of it.

When reviewing Fish Tank, coincidentally another Fassbender film, I commented ‘these characters are real. They talk like real people really talk.’ Shame shares this unvarnished, slice-of-life dynamic, and, interestingly, is even set in New York, the very stomping ground of Ross, Rachel, Joey et al, despite there being no obvious reason why its English writer-director couldn’t have set it in London. This, however, is a very different New York from the one familiar to Friends viewers- one which is grimy, lonely, and infused with graffiti and police tape and sleazy late-night sex clubs.

In line with this stark authenticity, Brandon is a complex guy for whom audience sympathy is not a given. There are times when he seems decent and reasonable, and there are others when he’s a complete asshole. Again, this recalls Fish Tank as you could have used the same words to describe his character in that movie, too, though Brandon is quite pointedly shown in a better light than Fish Tank’s Connor, despite being more prone to outbursts of unpalatable anger. For me, the unpleasant and distressing sex addiction that dogs Brandon serves as a metaphor for a more general inability to find satisfaction or gratification in life, something we all must have felt at some point, along with an abstract impression that there is an extra level of pleasure which you have never felt but can somehow sense is there and remains perpetually unattainable. These feelings can be targeted with any range of stimulus- booze, drugs, literature, travel, yoga, stock-car racing, fireworks, or, as in Almost Famous, an insistence that you follow your favourite band absolutely everywhere. Of course, one gets the feeling that for Brandon, this problem is particularly bad- he seems unlikely to even have a favourite band, let alone devote any of his time to them- and that, I guess, is why his anger is fairly understandable, in contrast to his Fish Tank character, whose behaviour is more straightforwardly unacceptable. In arguably the film’s most crucial scene, Brandon is offered a way out- a real relationship with a worthwhile, desirable woman of substance, who likes him well enough and is willing to give him a try- and he blows it. This, again, may be a driving factor behind some of the more unpleasant conduct he goes on to exhibit.

Critics have found Shame an uncomfortable experience; Roger Ebert, in a highly positive four-star review, went so far as to say he didn’t think he could watch it again. My reaction to it wasn’t quite so strong, but that’s not to say that I was unaffected by its pulsating, often relatively subtle layers of discord and dread. Throughout, McQueen employs insistently held long shots, meaning we are at one point obliged to watch Brandon stare at a woman on the subway and continue to keep his unsmiling gaze trained on her even after being spotted, while she runs the gamut from being flattered, to perplexed, to unnerved, twitching, and beyond; I looked away, having felt like both starer and staree. A crass encounter with a young woman at a bar near the end of the film is similarly repellent, Brandon’s conduct standing in marked contrast to that which had earlier compelled a beautiful blonde woman to engage in impromptu, illicit outdoor sex with him or that which had prompted his co-worker Marianne to seriously consider him as a potential boyfriend. The point of all this? Well, I guess it is to impart that people contain multitudes, a theme I also touched on when reviewing The Great Beauty; their behaviour is not always going to be consistent, or fully comprehensible. It helps to mark Shame out as a work of maturity, complexity and power, though not one which will necessarily leave the viewer feeling satisfied. They are perhaps more apt to feel displaced and maladjusted.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

(This review, written as part of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century, freely makes reference to other films from the same list and does not read as well when taken out of its original context. It is reproduced here only for the convenience of having a director’s works collected on the same page.)

12 Years a Slave is, as its title suggests, a film that examines the sweep of slavery within the microcosm of one man’s experiences across a relatively short amount of time. Ambitious, then, and for the most part, there’s nothing wrong with any of it- it’s finely acted, commandingly directed, and a cinematographic sensation; these aspects, together with a strong, smooth narrative that brooks few diversions, result in a film that offsets its hard-to-watch qualities with others that are decidedly easy. The likes of Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Michael Kenneth Williams and Sarah Paulson are all on hand to make sure that even small roles are handled with the highest standards. It’s a good film- I mean, it really is, there’s no question of that. If I was to put a figure on the film’s levels of general success, however, it would be less than 100%- probably somewhere around 75 or 80.

I was reminded of observations I made earlier about Son of Saul- ‘[The camera] rarely closes in on anyone’s face to make sure it drives home a dramatic point. There are no musical cues to spell out that one moment is especially intense, or another particularly poignant.’ Well, this is a film that does do those kinds of things. Similarly, I said of White Material- ‘Maria never makes any great speech vowing that she will die on her land if necessary, that she will go down with this ship, come hell or high water, to rapturous applause.’ In 12 Years a Slave, however, while there is no ‘centrepiece’ speech, or explosion of overplayed catharsis, the dialogue does sometimes include elevated, extremely earnest quasi-monologues; meanwhile, characters are set out as ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, and just to make sure we don’t miss the point, Michael Fassbender’s deplorable, moustache-twirling mega-villain gets worse over time, culminating in a climactic scene of visceral, utterly heartless brutality, notable for the mildness of the victim’s transgression and the act’s complete lack of necessity.

Were there ‘baddies’ involved in slavery? Well, yes, of course there were. Did they have no redeeming qualities whatsoever- their wives too? Yes, by law of averages, that simply must have been the case. Did they commit acts that were unwarranted beyond all notions of logic, reason, or decency? Yes, yes and yes. Is Steve McQueen ‘wrong’ to use a few sledgehammer tactics in his vision, especially when they are offset by more balanced shades elsewhere in the picture? Of course he’s not ‘wrong’, even if you don’t subscribe to the notion that a director can, at any time, make any kind of film they like- it’s completely arguable that such aspects are not in fact shortcomings at all, but perfectly valid filmmaking choices that some directors would elect to make, and others wouldn’t.

It could also be argued that slavery is itself a ‘sledgehammer’ issue that requires ‘sledgehammer’ tactics. Maybe that’s true. Nevertheless, it still feels pertinent to consider, from a filmmaking standpoint, whether the movie is ultimately good enough to ‘get away’ with the sorts of decisions that might otherwise be considered risky. Again, for the most part, yes, it is, to an extent that I would say runs at about 75 to 80%. That’s to its unmistakable credit- a great many lesser films have been derailed by melodramatic and immoderate excess. The overall effect is a film that risked losing tonal control, and largely didn’t.

Ultimately, one wonders whether to judge a film like this on how upsetting it is. If it’s more upsetting than Son of Saul or The Pianist, which on balance, I think it probably is, does that then make it more successful? Similarly, can it be compared to Spotlight, in that it deals with an incredibly serious overarching subject, or is slavery a ‘bigger’ issue than paedophilia in the Catholic Church, and does the ‘bigger’, bolder tone of 12 Years a Slave, in comparison to the drier and much more reserved Spotlight, reflect that? The latter film is, of course, primarily concerned with characters who have not been through these experiences themselves, but are merely investigators, a pivotal consideration.

As ever, the depiction of man’s inhumanity to man is one which is shot through with incredibly sharp and knotty thorns. General human decency should be a basic cornerstone of our beliefs as we collectively try to make sense of a confusing and often astoundingly unfair world, yet time after time we are reminded that this crucial, foundational tenet, on which all of our culture and civilisation should rest, just isn’t there; instead we have a malignant, forbidding vortex in its place. As one character puts it at one point, when preparing to separate a woman from her children, despite her- naturally- begging him not to, ‘My sentimentality extends the length of a coin.’ Why? Why does he think like that, and not consider it a problem? Why did these people do the things they did when there were so many other behavioural options available? As I mentioned when discussing Son of Saul, I struggle to effectively put myself in the situations depicted, and fully engage with how it might have felt- I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I simply don’t know, and for that I’m grateful; 12 Years a Slave, minor apprehensions aside, was a powerful and effective reminder of such good fortune and gratitude.