Steve McQueen’s SHAME is a complicated movie.
Not narratively, from that perspective it’s pretty straightforward: a man wrestles with his increasingly uncontrollable sexual addiction. But from a performance perspective, the task given actor Michael Fassbender was not an easy one – take this man whose perversions and callous use of other people define him, then redefine him as someone sympathetic. That is something that can’t be written or directed, it is a kind of anguish that can only be conveyed human to human, and nonverbally.
Fassbender’s expressions go a long way towards accomplishing this, but in my opinion it is the language of his entire body where Fassbender best conveys the abyss this character has cast himself into, this hole he desperately wants to climb out of but the lures of his darkness are too torturously tantalizing.
That makes him not a pervert but a prisoner, one not living for his desires but dying inside because of them.
And that is worth our sympathy.
the flawless frame 