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 Post subject: Shame
PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 6:10 pm 
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Joined: Sat Dec 04, 2010 5:29 pm
Posts: 2433
Location: Los Angeles, CA
This movie was recommended to me by my brother, but I was interested in seeing it in any case because of the director's previous work Hunger. Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender are a good chemical mixture.

As for Shame, picture a John Cassavettes film but replace booze with sex. High brow as high brow gets. It's about Brandon (Fassbender), a sex addict who has to cope with his sister moving in with him (that's not the premise, that's the plot). On it's surface, Shame is art porn. I'd even say it's art porn in the subtext as well, but I understood what this film was trying to say early in act one. The film is about how the world is shameless with sex and sexual partners but outwardly condemns and judges Brandon, who is crippled with the shame of exploiting the worlds secret desires for his own pleasure. He draws out the shame of other people and consumes it. He gets off on it. The line: "we're not bad people, we just come from a bad place" hammers it home at the end of the film.

In the best of Cassavettes films, the plot is usually secondary and Shame is similar in this respect. It's more about the character's (but mostly about the actors performance of that character) epiphany and not necessarily the audience's epiphany. The characters on paper seem shallow and predictable, but it is the power of the performances which make it watchable (try to picture Woman Under the Influence without Gena Rowlands or Peter Falk and you'll see a pretty weak and confusing film).

Enough can't be said of the courage of Michael Fassbender. He takes the shallow archetype of a sex fiend and gives it depth beyond measure. Equally laudable is the direction of Steve McQueen. Highlight was a restaurant scene where you start a long shot and at the end, the camera has zoomed into a close up without you even realizing it. It's the slowest zoom I've ever seen.

Anyway, if you got the patience for a film like this, I'd recommend you check it out. But I doubt I'll watch it again.

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Last edited by Crutch on Sat Feb 23, 2013 1:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Shame (2012)
PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:29 am 

Joined: Sat Apr 23, 2011 5:21 am
Posts: 764
the only thing that really intrigued me throughout the film was "how the hell did they film all those sex scenes without penetration, real cunnilingus, analingus, etc..". I wish I was Fassbender...


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 Post subject: Re: Shame (2012)
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 8:55 am 
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Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2011 4:44 pm
Posts: 612
Location: Quincy, MA
2011.


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 Post subject: Re: Shame (2012)
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 1:18 pm 
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Joined: Sat Dec 04, 2010 5:29 pm
Posts: 2433
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Yeah. Realized it after I posted and cared too little to fix it or even bring it up. But I watched it in 2012...




.....oh wait.

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