Michael Fassbender shamelessly continues a tremendous year

http://www.nxus.co/movies/michael-fassbender-shamelessly-continues-tremendous-year-4449/

by White Rabbit on 05 September 2011
Michael Fassbender shamelessly continues a tremendous year

Without doubt, Michael Fassbender has made himself known this year. Whether it’s a romantic literary adaptation (Jane Eyre) or a special-effect charged summer blockbuster (X-Men: First Class), film fans will have seen his face somewhere at some point over the duration of 2011, and that presence has only grown stronger at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

The German-Irish actor stars in two of the festival’s big features, the psychological drama A Dangerous Method, with Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen, and Steve McQueen’s second motion picture, Shame. The former has been met with positive reviews from critics, and the latter it seems, despite the gritty and flagrant subject matter, has also.

Of Fassbender’s performance, The Hollywood Reporter states: It’s amazing that it has taken him this long to be fully recognized, as he’s got it all: Looks, authority, physicality, command of the screen, great vocal articulation, a certain chameleon quality and the ability to suggest a great deal within while maintaining outward composure, just for starters. Whether he becomes a real movie star is another matter but, when it comes to pure acting skill and potential, it’s possible that Daniel Day-Lewis now has a young challenger.

The film, which also stars Academy Award nominee Carey Mulligan, centers on a thirty-something New Yorker with a sex addiction (Fassbender), whose world is jarred when his headstrong younger sister (Mulligan) waltzes back into his life. Director McQueen is no stranger to dark material. His first film, 2008′s Hunger – which he co-wrote, and also starred Fassbender – was acclaimed for it’s disturbing and fearless portrayal of Bobby Sands, and the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

Considering it’s graphic content, mainstream audiences are likely to shy away from Shame, which is a shame, but comments and criticism thus far certainly cement Fassbender’s star status. In an industry saturated with pretty faces and bulging biceps that, unfortunately, don’t come with matching talent, Fassbender is a performer full of promise, whose years of steadily climbing the acting ranks to Hollywood are paying off grandly.

To read more of The Hollywood Reporter’s comments on Shame, go here. They also feature a review of David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method here.
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