Great Character: Brandon (“Shame”)

This month’s theme: Addiction. Today’s guest post by Jason Cuthbert features Brandon from the 2011 movie Shame, written by Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan.

Steve McQueen, not the 1960’s movie star speed demon from Bullitt, but the refreshingly provocative British director and co-screenwriter of Hunger from 2008 and this year’s Twelve Years a Slave, kept the heartbeat of controversy thumping erratically with Shame in 2011. Co-written with Abi Morgan, McQueen cast the incredibly fascinating performer Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, Prometheus) as Brandon, a hardcore sex addict, chasing the climax that won’t quit. Fassbender’s Golden Globe-nominated portrayal presents the male conquest of sexual gratification as an “AdDicktion” that thrives on maximum physical contact and a startlingly allergic reaction to intimacy.

Shame plot summary from IMDB:

In New York City, Brandon’s carefully cultivated private life — which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction — is disrupted when his sister arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay.

For a Hollywood handsome, well-dressed, gainfully employed bachelor like Brandon, his solitude certainly appears to be self-imposed, no different than the anti-social impulses of the other more mainstream addicts of the drunk and drug variety. Sex manifests an aptly titled “shame” that overflows above Brandon’s otherwise empty personality. Flipping through the Shame screenplay, it becomes clear just how socially shallow Brandon’s gene pool really is, with secondary characters dominating the dialogue department — scene after scene. But when he does speak up, sexual desire even creeps its smutty little head into his casual conversations at his job.

STEVEN: Don’t tell me. No cabs.
BRANDON: No, your wife wouldn’t let me leave
this morning.

Brandon’s “sex-capades” are considered just too extreme and outrageous for his modest, soft-spoken demeanor, to the point that when his personal computer at work is discovered to have a wasteland of XXX-rated media romps, the blame only falls on his intern. I guess its true what they say, “it’s those quiet ones that you have to keep your eye on.”

What has happened in Brandon’s hidden past that he is shielding himself from revisiting? Are there secrets so dark that a real traditional girlfriend would never be able to see them clearly enough to stick by him? Intimate emotional attachment is treated like a sexually transmitted disease when Brandon begins seeing a vivacious co-worker named Marianne (Nicole Beharie.)

BRANDON: Well, yeah. I mean, I just don’t understand why people would want to get married. Especially nowadays, I mean, it’s.. You know.. I don’t see the point.

Is being the preeminent playboy that would make George Clooney proud the only reason for his Titanic-level relationship-wrecks? Or is Brandon’s personal Hugh Hefner-sized stash of porn publications and web-cam cyber sex-mates a necessity that mirrors oxygen?

He places blatant judgment on his sister for having sex with his married boss, while he has privately pursued a woman wearing a wedding ring on the subway. But of course, he would never share this hypocritical shame with his sibling. Wedding rings must be like a pot of gold to Brandon, proof that his intended sex partner will leave romance at home, and bring erotica to the party in his pants.

BRANDON: No, no, no, no. I’m not.. I’m not saying it like that. I mean, I just mean, you know.. One person for the rest of your life? I mean, it’s.. I mean, you know, you come to restaurants, you see couples sitting together and they don’t even speak to one another. They don’t have anything to say, they don’t have anything.

Brandon’s lack of self-expression when a honest-to-goodness flesh-and-blood woman is in his presence dials into his private line of personal details too shameful to open up about. Just having dinner with Marianne and walking her to her subway train back to Brooklyn appears to be as painful to him as his missing erection while with her during a future outing.

Brandon doesn’t want a relationship with his sister Sissy or anything more than a hotel date with Marianne. In both cases, he feels trapped, shut out of his desire for shame on his own terms — without judgment or criticism. But for every awkward silence that we watch Brandon cringe through, there is a multiplied awakening of inner venting externalized when he viscously objectifies a woman at a bar, with disrespectful disregard for her significant other.

Are Brandon’s only true friends Fingerella and Palmala Handerson? Where is Brandon’s family that he relocated to New York City with from Ireland? And what exactly did his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) mean by: “ We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place”? Were they sexually abused as children? It makes you wonder when she proves to be similarly sexually promiscuous as Brandon with her one-night stands and all.

For his stiff struggle with a life of shame, his painful double-life, as well as his need for emotional cleansing — Brandon is one GREAT CHARACTER.

If Disunity is a great place from which to start a Protagonist in terms of their psychological journey, then addiction is a great way of conveying that state of being. By definition, addiction means Disunity, a constant battle between one’s will and the power of the addiction.

This month, we’ve explored character addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling and now sex. Like a hero, they have given themselves over to something bigger than themselves, but the cause is not noble, rather it is destructive, and one each character cannot fight.

Good stuff for finding compelling characters.

Thanks to Jason for yet another Great Character post. Join us in comments for a discussion of notable movie characters dealing with addiction.