I just got back from seeing Shame.

Spoilers.

This film will probably stay with me for a long time, and, even though I’ll undoubtedly end up adding it to my DVD collection on its day of release, I don’t know how long it would be before I want to watch it again, just because its power isn’t in what you see on the screen, but how you react to it as a consciousness. And that’s something I wouldn’t care to consider again and again.

It was nothing short of visionary. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Its directing was reminiscent of low-budget, natural romances (e.g. Blue Valentine, An Education), with a profundity in showing happenings to their full extent. The shots were long and enduring, witnessing each event from beginning to end, be it a journey on a train, an evening jog, a date, or even a sexual encounter. It draws focus to the character’s humanity, and, in turn, our likeness to him. He is a distinctly, thoroughly human character.

Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan both gave outstanding performances, and suited the roles perfectly. Their light-hearted superficial jovial attitudes become excruciating to watch as the audience becomes more and more conscious of an unmentioned, ominous, disturbed past. These two characters are both suffering, and their suffering pulls them apart. I had such an emotional investment in both of the characters by the end of the film. In fact, not only the characters themselves, but their relationship as whole. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like I was desperate for a happy ending. Even though I know I loved the ending in how tragic it is, the fact is that, at the moment, I was so caught up in it that I wanted these two characters to reconcile, defeat their addictions, overcome their past… It was, as I said earlier, so overwhelmingly human.

Overall, it had a poignancy far beyond the vast majority of films. It penetrates further than I was expecting, forcing the audience to reflect and respond, contemplate on how their own life mirrors that of the character. It creates an experience that is difficult to stomach, or, at least, consider re-stomaching. I would recommend this to anybody who’s interested in something that really makes you think. Perhaps not even in a way that you want to think. But it is an experience worth having. And it’s worth having many times over.