12 Years a Slave - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Slavery is Bad.

A free Black man in the North is kidnapped and sold into slavery. He does everything possible to survive so he can hopefully get free to see his family again. Luckily, Brad Pitt shows up as morally-minded Liberal Canadian and makes all well.

12 Years a Slave (2013) **1/2
Dir. Steve McQueen
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Sarah Paulson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Steve McQueen continues to amaze me as a genuinely great director who makes movies I don't much care for. His best work, Hunger, still impresses in terms of being just the right balance between his skill and harrowing subject matter, but Shame, in spite of its clear display of McQueen's natural abilities still made me want to throw in the towel on the guy since it was so jack-hammeringly, thuddingly and relentlessly oppressive in its need to tell us that sex addiction is not good. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Shame is bereft of genuine passion, humour and basic entertainment value. It also had the horrifically simpering Carey Mulligan who is the most inexplicable go-to gal for leading roles since Catherine Spaak (who was once described by Pauline Kael as being so boring that when she doffed her clothes "even her breasts were boring").

Luckily, for us, Carey Mulligan is not in 12 Years a Slave. Curiously, she actually might have worked in the role of Michael Fassbender's frigid, bed-wench-hating wife, but ultimately McQueen cast Sarah Paulson who does an admirable job and ultimately seems a perfect match for the brutal slaveowner). And as for 12 Years a Slave, I will not for a second try to say that McQueen doesn't display some utterly dazzling directorial touches - quite a few, really. Alas, he still has the annoying habit of wielding a cudgel filled with deep earnestness.

Granted, this is a film about the true life story of free-man-turned-slave Solomon Northrup who was horrendously forced into 12 years of merciless servitude until gaining his freedom thanks to a kindly Canadian contractor doing work on the plantation, and as such, one expects the picture to seriously address its subject, but McQueen's unflagging Western Union telegraphing in every scene becomes tiresome and takes away from the drama so otherwise inherent in the picture.

When the drama appears to be working, McQueen errs by pushing the movie into overwrought, clumsy sentiment. (The most egregious moment occurs in the film's conclusion when Northrup is reunited with his family.) When the drama works best, it's when we can spend as much time as possible with the great actor Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northrup, who invests his character with such great SCREEN intensity, that one occasionally DOES get lost in the film in all the right ways. We get lost in Ejiofor playing a man who must always mask his emotions in order to stay alive - not, as he says, "to survive, but to live." In fact, the most powerful and poignant element of the film is the notion of doing everything possible in order to get back to a life once lived and to experience the joys of those he loves and misses. To actually be able to achieve this is probably one of the most difficult things for any actor to pull off and there's no trick-pony work going on here at all.

It's McQueen who feels like the trick pony - trying to mask his sledgehammer with style and occasionally succeeding, but more often, not effectively navigating the waters he's poured into his own receptacle. At times, we feel the tale proceeds by rote - part of the problem, perhaps in John Ridley's by-the-numbers screenplay and the other, in McQueen's insistence that every scene hammer home the overwhelming notion of how horrendous slavery is. You know, I think we get it, Steve. If only he could use his visual gifts to enhance the storytelling itself.

One of the great things McQueen does, is trust in his leading actor to create a number of moments wherein the camera rests solely on Ejiofor's face. More often than not, the screenplay and the manner in which McQueen chooses to render the action, is by setting up a key element on each end of the close-up, neither of which specifically telegraphs nor buttons done the overwhelming emotion that Ejiofor must convey. It's in these moments where we learn so much about the character, but also where he is emotionally and NARRATIVELY in the story and it's all achieved visually and beautifully, by both the actor AND director.

Often though, McQueen resorts to the old sledgehammer in the same way he did in Shame. His placement of the camera, the lighting and even the blocking of two paralleled sex scenes in 12 Years a Slave are so painfully obvious in their execution and the fact that they both occur in this manner. One involves a female slave, so starved for human contact that she mounts Northrup and he grudgingly complies with her need for some bone. The other involves Michael Fassbender forcing his manhood upon his favourite slave wench. He needs to slip her the root, but she is most certainly in another time and place as he does it - in cahoots, of course, to the look on Northrup's face in the similar scene.

Come on, Steve. Give us break. The sledgehammer here reminds me of that scene in Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg that compelled Pauline Kael to comment on a scene involving Glynn Turman beating his meat to try achieving an erection and she hilariously found a delicious way to crap on Bergman's obviousness by reminding us of the old "How bad was it?" jokes when she offered up the answer that things were so bad in the pre-war Weimar Republic that "not even a Black man could get it up."

What's too bad is that so much of the film attempts to avoid easy messaging and even easier sentiment, but when both rear their overblown heads, they have this horrible effect that makes us think too long and hard about what McQueen is trying to tell us. We're aware of his hand in the most obvious fashion. This is, of course, a far cry from someone like Scorsese, whose show-offy style is always there for the sake of the narrative and so seamless that we're dazzled, yes, but jettisoned into the stratosphere because we DON'T feel his hand until we really think about it (and usually long after the combination of visceral, emotional, visual and narrative excess, so gorgeously melded, have had their way with us and moved on to something else). McQueen seemed to have this so much more under control in Hunger that one feels he's been going out of his way in these two subsequent films to top himself rather than building incrementally on his strengths as a director.

For me, after two helpings of 12 Years a Slave, I'm far more interested in how and where to place it within the context of seminal American films about the subject of slavery. McQueen's film will possibly grow on me in subsequent viewings and in spite of my reservations, I'd still place it within the pantheon of films addressing slavery I've included four images below that I think do as good a job as any in placing 12 Years in some form of cinematic historical context.

David Wolper's production of Alex Haley's plagiarized book ROOTS in 1977, still remains a powerful groundbreaker in the treatment of slavery on-screen. The first two episodes in particular are a near masterpiece of narrative brilliance AND as social document. LeVar Burton as the young Kunta Kinte, smouldered with such force that I always wondered why his most well-known work after the legendary miniseries was as that blind guy with the weird thing over his eyes in Star Trek: TNG.

Tarantino, of course, delivered a similar revisionism to slavery in the extremely subversive Django Unchained as he brought to the Holocaust in Inglourious Basterds. And, of course, the movie not only brought social satire to the fore, but did so by making a movie that was strikingly cool.

Richard Fleischer's adaptation of Kyle Onstott's potboiler novel Mandingo is a bit more difficult to approach due to its myopic reputation as a "bad, exploitative" film, but frankly, in Fleischer's hands, I'd argue the issue of slavery might still be most powerfully felt and rendered with the greatest skill on both stylistic and narrative grounds. The ugly, filthy Falconhurst plantation had none of the antebellum charm we're used to seeing in so many movies, the dialogue is always thick with Southern gumbo, the violence as raw as one would expect, the racist attitudes as sickening as we're likely to see in any motion picture and, yes, Fleischer not being afraid to frame the world within a structure of melodrama.

The bottom line is that these three films take big chances and break genuine cinematic ground. All McQueen really achieves is an earnestness that ends up overshadowing the importance of the story he's trying to tell and the world he's trying to depict, Aside from a handful of genuinely great performances in addition to Ejiofor, include Lupita Nyong'o's heartbreaking performance as the sexually abused and favoured slave of Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch as the "kindly" plantation owner and Paul Dano as the hotheaded racist overseer.

Alas, many of the other key performances on the Whitey side of the fence are pure Snidely Whiplash - less so with Fassbender and ludicrously so with Paul Giamatti as a slave trader. On the side of the exploiters, one marvels at James Mason in Mandingo as he straight-facedly utters some of the most horrendously ignorant observations - not only about slaves, but women in general. Leonardo Di Caprio and Don johnson in Django Unchained seem far more acceptable over-the-top performances that are truly brave rather than Fassbender's one-note nastiness in 12 Years a Slave. It's one-note in that offensively Oscar-baiting fashion that seems far more exploitative in its Oscar-baiting intensity than anything on display in the Fleischer and Tarantino pictures.

One might also assume I pretty much detest McQueen's film. Far from it. It's an important work replete with several set pieces that reflect McQueen's natural gifts and a handful of great performances, but at the end of the day, the whole thing feels like Oscar-bait and this, ladies and gentlemen is especially reprehensible and not worthy of its original source material.

Like Shame, I'm forced to grudgingly acknowledge anything positive in McQueen's film at all.

"12 Years a Slave" is in wide release all over the world and ever-expanding its playmates.

THE CINCINNATI KID - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Norman Jewison's lollapalooza of a movie that sizzles today as much as when it was first made.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965) dir. Norman Jewison
Starring: Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margaret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, Joan Blondell, Rip Torn, Cab Calloway, Milton Selzer, Jeff Corey

***1/2

Review By Greg Klymkiw

These days it's hard to for me to watch Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid without wondering about the picture that could have been if its original director Sam Peckinpah had not been replaced after only two weeks of shooting.

This, of course, is always the problem with knowing too much about a movie before you see it and why in recent years I've refused to watch trailers, read reviews and/or puff pieces and resist, as best I can, the onslaught of publicity accompanying virtually every new theatrical release. It's tough to do, but I've been pretty successful at having a relatively clean slate when I see movies now.

Not so with older films, though.

And knowing too much kept me away from The Cincinnati Kid for far too long.

My first helping of Jewison's thrilling, finely crafted ode to the world of back-room poker games was at the age of six or seven and I distinctly recall loving it for many years afterwards and trying to see it whenever it was replayed on television (uh, we didn't have home entertainment options other than broadcast television, kids, and some of us didn't even have cable television until we were in our teen years or older).

What I remember most is loving Steve McQueen. I can't think of any kids my age who DIDN'T love him. He was the antithesis to established stalwarts like John Wayne and even the up-and-coming (oh yes, there was such a time) Clint Eastwood.

Steve McQueen was cool! Super cool! His laconic, tight-lipped brand of manhood was what WE all wanted to be as red-blooded young males. The Duke was what we wanted our fathers to be and Clint was, well, Clint - a screen hero ON-screen, but untouchable as a persona - even in our imaginations.

Kind of like Jesus Christ.

With Steve McQueen, though, it was so easy to slip into his shoes in both fantasy and play. He was the modern man and most importantly, EVERY MAN. And damn, if boys did not want to be MEN! And the man we chose to be, the man we imagined we could be, was McQueen.

The other thing I remember loving as a kid was the WORLD of The Cincinnati Kid. Like The Hustler, it depicted cool guys smoking Marlies or Luckies, surrounded by gorgeous dames (yes, DAMES, not WOMEN) who adored them. And they played games for a living instead of working. And they played hard.

What wasn't to love?

As the years advanced, The Cincinnati Kid faded from my thoughts and Robert Rossen's The Hustler replaced it as the movie to beat in the men-who-play-games genre. This certainly made sense in terms of how my tastes developed - something about the hip, breezy mid-60s style of Jewison's approach to the tale began to pale against my discovery and re-discovery of late 50s on-the-sleeve male angst of Walter Tevis's novel of the poolhall-hustle and Robert Rossen's grim, sweat-drenched film adaptation.

In addition to this, I became increasingly obsessive with the work of Sam Peckinpah and upon learning that the iconoclastic genius had been the original director of The Cincinnati Kid, I immediately wanted to know more about THAT movie - a movie that didn't even really exist except in Peckinpah's mind and by extension, ours.

During most of my early adult life, the only information I could find on the matter was a handful of odd reports in the trades about how Peckinpah was behind schedule, over-budget and most of all, wasting precious shooting hours on lascivious nude footage of an actress in bed with Rip Torn, the co-star and chief villain of The Cincinnati Kid.

Peckinpah's firing from the picture led to a long period of inactivity. He had, as it turned out, become persona non Grata in Hollywood.

More years chugged by and long after Peckinpah's death, I continued to watch and re-watch his work, while through this time, all I could think about was how Peckinpah could have brought his penchant for the grubby grotesqueness of life to the world of hardcore poker players. God knows, Peckinpah lived life as mean and hard as the men in his films and looking at his most personal work, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, the mere IDEA of Peckinpah directing The Cincinnati Kid was enough to get me salivating.

In 2001, David Weddle's great book "If They Move, Kill 'Em - The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah" was published and for the first time, it became clear what happened. Peckinpah was hired by one of the least creative producers in Hollywood.

An inveterate deal maker, Martin Ransohoff's company Filmways specialized in television commercials, and then rural-based TV sitcoms like "The Beverly Hillbilles", "Green Acres" and "Petticoat Junction" and years later, the long-running game show "Hollywood Squares".

Ransohoff initially thought of The Cincinnati Kid as a western with playing cards instead of guns and was thrilled to have Peckinpah, the director of the acclaimed western Ride The High Country on board. Peckinpah started the project that had no script save for a long treatment by Paddy Chayefsky. Eventually, the treatment was cobbled into a screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr. and Terry Southern. Peckinpah took the writing he liked best and made the movie his own. And as always, he did a lot of the writing himself - uncredited, of course.

Ransohoff, for his part, wanted to make - no kidding, these are his words - a "Popsicle".

Shooting in black and white, Peckinpah retained a labour riot from Ring Lardner's script, dehumanized the female characters - objectifying them - not out of misogyny, but as a realistic comment on this male-dominated sub-culture of high-stakes back-room poker and, as was Peckinpah's wont, he added higher levels of violence and sex.

What a movie!

It was, however, never finished.

Ransohoff viewed two weeks of rushes, declared them as "dour" and promptly fired Peckinpah.

Peckinpah's previous picture, Major Dundee - a film that had "masterpiece" written all over it until the moronic producer on that one, Jerry Bresler, took the picture away from "Bloody Sam" in post-production and butchered it - going so far as to maliciously and intentionally sabotage the picture and lay blame on its director.

Bresler obsessively chided Ransohoff in the early going of The Cincinnati Kid - claiming a "maniac" was now at the helm. Peckinpah ignored all stupid suggestions from Ransohoff (which, it seems, were ALL stupid) .

Once shooting began, Ransohoff never went near the set. He sent a bum boy to spy while he busied himself on deal-making for future productions and oversaw his myriad of television productions - no doubt spending an inordinate amount of time auditioning swine for the role of "Arnold the pig" on the series "Petticoat Junction". The spy told tales out of school to his boss - all of which have since been publicly refuted by all major players on the set.

For his part, Peckinpah staged a fight scene, a chase scene and a labour riot with 200 extras. According to numerous witnesses on-set, he latter sequence was brilliantly and efficiently shot in ONE DAY!!!

Hardly the work of an out-of-control maniac.

Alas, Ransohoff wanted his "Popsicle" and did what needed to be done. He hired Norman Jewison. Surely the director of 40 Pounds of Trouble and Send Me No Flowers was just what the doctor ordered.

Jewison, as it turned out, had no intention of making a "Popsicle". He had already made his fair share of cinematic frozen lollies (exquisitely wrought, I might add) and was ready for a change in direction. For Jewison, entertainment would be the order of the day, but not at the expense of drama nor capturing a sense of time and place.

Seeing The Cincinnati Kid recently on Blu-ray, I was delighted that it held up magnificently. Everything I loved about the picture as a kid was there - and then some. In fact, seeing it recently, I was - on one hand sorry I avoided seeing it again for such a long time, but on the other, I was delighted to have done so as it seemed as fresh, vital and entertaining as when I first saw it. (Added life experience - including a 4-year stint surrounded by gamblers as a bet seller at a racetrack and seeing a few thousand more movies both didn't hurt.)

Jewison himself refers to the picture as his "Ugly Duckling" - that special favourite that provided his crossover from early-60s rom-com purgatory to a world where he delivered some of the coolest and most important American pictures of the last half of the 20th Century (In the Heat of the Night, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rollerball, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck).

This classic gambling picture stands on its own as one of the best of its kind.

McQueen plays Eric Stoner (nicknamed the "Kid"), a poker player of the highest order who is just as happy cleaning out dubious lower-drawer sleaze balls in crummy joints as he is in more upscale surroundings. In fact, he probably enjoys the sleazier games, but like all those who prefer a steady diet of tough, but tasty flank steaks, he needs a tender filet Mignon to remind him what his ultimate goals are - wealth and more importantly, total domination.

When the Kid finds out that primo gambler Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson) is coming to town, he asks his old pal Shooter (Karl Malden) to set up a match. Malden once held the top-dog spot until Lancey gutted him many years ago and has since built his reputation as an honest dealer and match-maker. Shooter promotes a warm-up round and pits Slade (Rip Torn), a local sleazy "businessman" against Lancey. Slade is gutted mercilessly. He blackmails Shooter to fix the deals in the Kid's favour to get revenge on Lancey.

When the big game comes, the Kid wins so many hands he suspects something's up. He confronts Shooter privately and not only demands fair deals, but - almost in retaliation - beds down Shooter's woman Melba (Ann-Margaret) and in the process, cheats on his own woman Christian (Tuesday Weld). When the next round begins, the Kid fixes it so that Shooter is retired from dealing. The wise-cracking old dame Lady Fingers (Joan Blondell) controls the deck. No cheating now. And the Kid begins his handiwork - winning hand after hand and gutting top-dog Lancey.

The final hand, to determine the ultimate winner, is one of the most thrilling set-pieces ever committed to celluloid in an American film. It's a scorcher - cards dealt, lots of sweat, billows of smoke, money piled up, poker faces betraying little, but extreme closeups of eyes betraying all. The cutting in this sequence, as it is through most of the film, is expertly rendered by editor Hal Ashby (who eventually went on to direct such classics as Being There, The Last Detail and Shampoo, to name but a few).

I love watching card games on film. Many critics complained that The Cincinnati Kid paled in comparison to The Hustler because pool was more visual and hence, more cinematic. What a crock! You either buy into the world of this film and, in particular, card playing - or you don't. Given the picture's success upon its first theatrical release as well as its staying power, the movie made card playing as thrilling as any sporting activity on film. In fact, there's only one picture that bests it in terms of on-screen poker playing - that being Martin Campbell's James Bond reboot Casino Royale with Daniel Craig. That's not a bad run. It took 40 years for someone to edge out The Cincinnati Kid in the poker-on-film sweepstakes and, I might add, only by a hair.

Jewison's picture soars on a number of fronts. With cinematographer Philip Lathrop and a first rate production design team, Jewison drains the picture of primary colours which delivers a unique and visually stunning antiquity. During the poker scenes, the blood red on the face cards jump out with far more power than any 3-D effect - overused with such abandon now - and it's this combination of light and design that delivers a contemporary flavour to the proceedings. So much so, that the movie seldom feels dated in terms of its mise en scene.

Only the 60s hair-dos of the female leads betray the period in which the movie is shot - but this, has more to do with the numb-nuts Martin Ransohoff and his desire for a "Popsicle" instead of a movie. In fact, one of the producer's arguments with Peckinpah was his insistence that the picture's focus should be on the love triangle between Steve McQueen, Ann-Margaret and Tuesday Weld (will Steve choose the "good" girl or the "bad"?).

Interestingly, Jewison seems as disinterested in the love triangle as Peckinpah was. For Peckinpah, women just didn't figure prominently in such a world (save for charming tough old birds like Lady Fingers). Again, this had nothing to do with a misogynistic view (an erroneous, easy and oft-volleyed criticism), but rather, Peckinpah's exploration of worlds that, by there very nature harboured misogyny.

Jewison appears to be a good sport about indulging Ransohoff's overwhelming aesthetic obsession - the ladies are there as eye candy. Nothing more, nothing less. In fact, the ending that appears on the Blu-ray release is NOT Jewison's preferred ending, but rather, Ransohoff's - which, idiotically attaches a happy conclusion to one of the love relationships and detracts from Jewison's powerful choice (closer, no doubt to Peckinpah's).

With a huge, fine cast all delivering to-die-for performances, The Cincinnati Kid is a wonderful movie. Edward G. Robinson (who replaced an ailing Spencer Tracy) turns his role of the wise old poker hand into one of the screen's most memorable characters. Robinson commands every shot he's in with the sense of power, confidence and gentlemanly style the role demands.

Karl Malden, always the stalwart supporting player - deftly blends the attributes he was most gifted with: the almost pathetic sensitivity of his "Mitch" from A Streetcar Named Desire and the roiling conflict of love and nastiness he exuded as Anthony Perkins's father in Fear Strikes Out.

Of course, Rip Torn - surely one of the greatest screen actors of all time - weirdly chews the scenery with, I kid you not, restraint. There's not one likeable thing about the character he plays and yet, when he's on-screen, it's impossible to take one's eyes off him.

Two blasts from the past (even by 60s standards in the nostalgia sweepstakes) manage to add mega-wattage to Jewison's picture. I loved seeing Cab ("Minnie the Moocher") Calloway - so dashing, so stylish, so cool! And a thorough delight is getting ganders at the sashaying, ballsy Joan Blondell as the hottest, sexiest MILF who ever dealt a straight-up hand of poker. Throw in a snake pit of ferociously brilliant character actors like Jack Weston, Milton Selzer, Jeff Corey and the rest - down to even the extras and background players who always look like they belong in the film's world - and you have a picture that sizzles = as much today as in the 60s.

It's a lollapalooza!

Jewison has every right to be proud of it.

As for Peckinpah's version, all we can do is dream about the movie that never was, but could have been. After his firing from the picture, Peckinpah's life spiralled downwards. According to actor-director L.Q. Jones in David Weddle's book:

"It totally destroyed him for a long time . . . nobody would hire him, so he couldn't make movies. That's like telling a preacher he can't go to church. That's Sam's church. So what do you do? You go to pieces, which is what he did."

But years afterwards, Peckinpah directed The Wild Bunch.

He found his way back again.

"The Cincinnati Kid" is available on Warners Home Entertainment. The Blu-ray is a stunning transfer and beautifully captures Jewison's mise-en-scene and Philip Lathrop's great cinematography. One of the fabulous special features is a commentary track from Norman Jewison. Uncle Norman delivers great commentary. Along with Martin Scorsese, I'd argue Jewison's director commentaries are the finest wrought on all home entertainment mediums. He's seldom anecdotal, never dull and always full of great material on the art of filmmaking. If you're interested in purchasing the film, free feel to use the Amazon links below and, at the same time, support the maintenance of this site.

Shame - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Dreary Sex Bereft of Humour and trash sensibility

Shame (2011) dir. Steve McQueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie

***

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There is absolutely no question that director Steve McQueen is the real thing. Filmmaking is hard-wired into his DNA. He not only composes dazzling imagery, he is ALWAYS thinking about how to tell his stories using every available visual flourish. It’s not overtly showy like, say, Darren Aronofsky, but equally vital and exciting. McQueen is one of a very few contemporary directors who propel the medium into dangerous, compelling territory.

Directors like McQueen are rare breeds in these dark days of feature film – they restore one’s faith in cinema’s power to be more than a rollercoaster ride. That said, he’s still as much a showman as any great filmmaker should be. He cascades and careens you along the track with gusto. McQueen, for all his panache, chooses to tell stories not aimed at 15-year-old boys. His two features, thus far, have delved into lives of experience and, thrust themselves unashamedly at audiences – wearing darkness on their respective sleeves as a badge of honour.

Shame is about sexual addiction. It follows its central character Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a successful, reasonably affluent single urban professional as he devotes virtually every single waking honour in the pursuit of sexual gratification. He’s killer sexy and malevolently charming and he can pretty much sleep with any woman he sets his sights on – and does.

Unlike the sexually addicted 70s female counterpart, Theresa Dunn (Diane Keaton) in the Richard Brooks film adaptation of Judith Rossner’s novel Looking For Mr. Goodbar, this is not a tale of sexual awakening transforming into sexual addiction. Right from the get-go in Shame we’re plunged solidly into the trajectory of someone who not only needs to constantly gratify himself with bar-pickups, but prostitutes, online peep shows, a gay bar blowjob and just plain unadulterated masturbation. (Sex, to coin Woody Allen, with someone he truly loves.) In fact, when Brandon finally meets a woman he genuinely likes (Nicole Beharie), he can’t get it up, tosses her from his pad and hires a whore to sodomize with gusto against the picture window frames of his high-rise.

Brandon’s only real friend is his boss Dave (James Badge Dale). The two of them prowl bars together, but Dave’s approach is far too obvious and in spite of tutelage from Brandon, he ignores it and follows his own less successful approach. In fact, the only time we really see Dave score is with Brandon’s messed-up, suicidal sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) who has insinuated herself upon Brandon’s space in order to get her head together.

It’s the relationship between the siblings where McQueen’s film really soars. Screenwriter Abi Morgan in collaboration with McQueen makes a wise choice to not specifically reveal the obvious pain the brother and sister have both shared at some point in their past. The hurt is there in spades, but never literalized. There’s nothing more annoying when this sort of background is ladled out ad-nauseum in order to provide easy answers or justification for aberrant behaviour. In fact, it is when a story takes on the heavy weight of morality, it becomes an easy way out for the characters to become pawns for us to sit in judgement based upon the storyteller’s own jackhammer point of view. This moralistic approach works in Looking For Mr. Goodbar as it is set at time when “aberrant” behaviour was a response to post-war repression from a previous generation and ties in with the character’s lapsed Catholicism and the notion of being punished, or doing penance for one’s sins. In Goodbar, the punishment is rape and murder – the snuffing out of a life not-well-lived. (I doubt I shall ever forget the image of Diane Keaton’s life-drained face bathed in the light of a strobe that clicks incessantly and ever-slowly.)

If I have a quibble with Shame, it’s two-fold. Firstly, the movie races to a “shocking” climactic moment that is inevitable. This might be the point, but it’s not dramatically satisfying. Secondly, I wish McQueen had a more pronounced sense of black humour and just a wee-bit of a trash sensibility to juice his dark tale up even more. Ulrich Seidl, for example, with Dog Days, drags us through a veritable sewage treatment plant of aberrant behaviour, but it’s often extremely funny. Rather than temper the despair, the humour actually heightens it. As for a pulp sensibility, I don’t think I’m asking for a Paul Verhoeven Showgirls approach, but Shame is about sex – a bit of snigger-laden Brian DePalm-styled exploitation could have done wonders to goose things up a bit, but also give even more power to McQueen’s tale of addiction and obsession.

Shame is as dark as McQueen’s previous film, Hunger (which starred Fassbender as IRA prisoner Bobby Sands), but where that film was physically claustrophobic (while being wildly cinematic), here McQueen opens up his palette to a myriad of locations. The result? More claustrophobia. This is not a failing.

In fact, it’s kind of cool.

Shame is being released in the USA by Fox Searchlight and in Canada by Alliance.