Shame-a-Colia - James King

My girlfriend and I went for a date. Which, for us, means dinner and a movie. We had two choices—Melancholia and Shame; we chose Shame.

I knew a couple of things going into the movie: Fassbender (great actor), McQueen (not Steve, former artist), sex, addiction, sex-addiction. I also knew the movie was NC-17, which means that, for the benefit of underage readers of this blog, I will have to use the following euphemisms:

“Piece”, as in Fassbender’s piece cannot be contained in a single frame

“Unmentionables”, as in women regularly disrobe, fully exhibiting unmentionables

“Knew”, as in Fassbender knew multiple women, simultaneously, in progressively less erotic, seedier encounters

Gritty and disturbing, Shame provides a haunting portrait of a man’s descent into addiction (and proves that sex addiction is no more fun than the others). He’s a functioning addict, who has a good job and some surface-level relationships. He’s also handsome and charming—a curse as he succumbs over and over again to compulsive sexual encounters. His cycle of unending porn and casual encounters becomes threatened when his troubled sister (Carey Mulligan) moves into his apartment. Her introduction into his life both hints at the cause of his addiction and forces him to acknowledge his troubled state. Agonizingly, however, Shame is more about the depths of addiction rather than the glories of recovery, and the audience can only hope for the eventual, off-screen healing hinted at during the movie’s final act.

Being the fun-loving couple that we are, we decided to see Melancholia as well the following Friday. Though much less gritty and disturbing than Shame, Melancholia is no slouch when it comes to despair, with an uber-depressed Kirsten Dunst even telling us that the “world is evil”. To me, it seems like the difference between the two films is that one is realistic, surface despair, while the other is fantastical, existential despair. That being said, Melancholia’s portrayal of severe depression felt no less real than Shame’s unflinching look at sex addiction. In fact, it might be necessary to use fantastical means to express the utter, extreme despair that someone with depression undergoes.

Of course the ultimate difference between the two films are the endings: one ends on a note of possible (though pretty unlikely) redemption and the other ends with (Spoiler!) the END OF THE WORLD (pretty rare for a movie to end with no possible next scene). For other comparisons, please refer to my bar graph: (Regrettably, the editor is unable to publish the graph at this time, not due to copyright laws. It's because the editor lacks computer skills.)

So, if you and a loved-one are looking for a good time on a bleak, winter’s evening; skip the feel-good flicks and embrace the post-holiday-hangover of Shame-A-Colia.