s.h.a.m.e

perhaps everybody's running from something. something really dark that we don't wanna know, we don't wanna face. but it's there. yet the question remains: where is the end point of the run? 

in this second feature film directed and written by Steve McQueen, we're introduced to a healthy and lively handsome man named Brandon (Fassbender - this is in fact the second time they worked together after the famous 2008 film Hunger), who was also hiding neatly the fact that he's a sex-addict. there's no explicit explanation as to why he was who he was, yet interestingly that's not the key-point the film had wanted to describe. the lack of dialog - despite that it was set in the famous city New York - with the tall and cold building as the backdrop, merely added up the gloomy portion of the movie. perhaps, one could say, as dark as Brandon's past. 

his endless sex routine was then distracted when his sister, Sissy (Mulligan), came into the picture. the woman, in a way or two, was actually a resemblance of Brandon's pathological problem: she was very much clingy to men to the extent she would beg for their love. 'New York, New York,' she sang the famous song in a cafe in a very slow tune, and it's painfully mesmerizing. it was through Sissy that Brandon slowly realized that he had the same pathological problem. 

there's no problem-solving there, although we did see Brandon's questioning himself and his morality (perhaps) everyday in silence. but knowing your problem (to the extent that you want help) isn't the same as questioning yourself - yet, again, this is not a drama that would give us any glimpse about that kind of fight. this is a movie where everything is laid down and given back to its viewer point-blank to interpret (and perhaps, to relate). so Brandon ran away from a woman to another woman - and instead of healing, he created deeper and deeper black hole inside his soul, and this was the core emotion of the movie after all, as the sex-scene and the full frontal nudity (which earner the movie an NC-17 rating) were so paralyzing that there's nothing sexy about it. 

in the end, 'We're not bad people. We just came from a bad place,' as Sissy told Brandon over the phone. and to that, perhaps we can't really escape.