Healing

Feel-good regenerative character building assignments can sternly yet sympathetically rehabilitate both inmate and injured bird alike, according to Craig Monahan's Healing, a family friendly sentimental melodrama.

Respectful, school-of-hard-knocksy, and well-rounded, with several strongly developed primary and secondary (somewhat one-dimensional) characters, it generically yet comprehensively annotates its subject matter, polarities within polarities structuring the altercations, emphasizing forgiveness and zoo therapy, and that no one can be left alone.

If you like animals, notably birds, there's a feast of endearing schmaltzy scenes within, the raptor Yasmin often used to transition, his facial expressions commenting on the action.

There's also a strong egalitarian dimension, Healing's principle character being an Iranian convict who was convicted for murder (Don Hany as Viktor Khadem), its narrative featuring his strengths and weaknesses as an individual, not as a member of a specific ethnicity, while still exploring aspects of his culture to indicate difference without effacing opportunity, giving both him and his Australian cohabitants an equal chance for release.

There are the odd ethnocentric slurs but they're residual, distastefully expressed.

The conflict within the polarities gives the story a gritty character which adds a real-world dimension to its ethics.

I still would have cut down the length by about 15 minutes, the cutesiness dulling its edge as too much time passes.

Shame

Consumed and dominated by uncontrollable sexual desires which demand constant strategic salacious improvisations, Brandon Sullivan's (Michael Fassbender) unquenchable thirst for carnal pleasures is disproportionately interrupted by a visit from his little sister (Carey Mulligan as Sissy Sullivan).

Who, as it turns out, has no where else to go.

His private carnivalesque prurient pursuits must now adjust themselves to the potential impact of familial judgment and the threat of patronizing restraint. As it becomes clear that Sissy's economic circumstances are by no means self-sufficient, the resultant limitations psychologically materialize a contemptuous backlash which leads to a breakdown in their sustainable relations.

And a resurgent unfettered libidinous conflagration.

Shame works as an emotionless stark rigid character study which sociologically examines localized affects of satyriasis. Michael Fassbender's focused distant unattached self-absorbed performance seductively infuses Mr. Sullivan with a wantonly calculated individualistic purpose. Carey Mulligan's struggling confused desperate counterpoint functions as an effective curve.

Responsibilities bear their consequences in jolting destructive strikes whose unleashed immediate pressures instantaneously distill a sense of belonging.

Consequent reactions determine semantic interpretations incorporating previously manifested patterns built into historical socio-foundations established in relation to a kaleidoscopic point of view.

Director Steve McQueen's direct approach attempts to resist the interpretative labyrinth.

In so doing we're given the cold hard narrow unforgiving facts.

Which themselves impose additional limits on Brandon Sullivan's freedom.