'Twas May 2004 that my cinemagoing obsession began, and look where it has got me! To celebrate ten years at the movies, a month-long series of reflections on the best of cinema that I have had the privilege of experiencing in that time.
Fifth place for the Best Acting Performance in that time goes to Michael Fassbender for Steve McQueen's 2011 sophomore film, Shame - a performance which won Fassbender the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival that year. After some time in underseen and undervalued roles in films of varying quality, McQueen's muse caught the attention of his biggest, and most appreciative audience yet in the part of Brandon, a sex-addicted New Yorker whose addiction begins to consume and transform his life when his troubled younger sister Sissy (an also brilliant Carey Mulligan) comes to stay in his apartment. Daring to delve deep into desperation, Fassbender delivers an enormously affecting performance that's even more emotionally naked than physically. Among other excellent performances in his brief career to date, and even as his star continues to rise, it's this one that stands out for me, and for good reason: imagine the leading men in some of his other films tackling a character like Brandon with such bravery and such potency - Gerard Butler? Brad Pitt? Josh Brolin? Exactly.
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