I've wanted to see A Dangerous Method for a while now, but no one I knew was willing to come with me to watch it. Doesn't a movie about the birth and development of psychoanalysis sound like crazy fun?
To all my friends who refused to see it, the joke's on you. I had, in fact, a wonderful time staring at the beauty of Michael Fassbender's face.
All joking aside though, I really did enjoy the movie. Sure, as entertainment goes, maybe David Cronenberg's direction leaned a little too heavily on exposition. Psychoanalysis has long been part of our cultural consciousness despite its fall from favor as the dominant mode of psychology, and Cronenberg could have assumed a little more intelligence of his target audience.
My main beef with the film is the jarring juxtapositions of theory with character development. The movie switches from one aspect to another with noticeable unevenness and kept me from becoming fully immersed in the play.
The film does a decent job of giving us the basics of psychoanalysis before spinning off into the the meatier parts of the storyline.
You know, the dirty details of the Freud-Jung mentorship turned rivalry. Oh, and let's not forgot the totally kinky sex that Carl Jung and Sabrina Spielrein were having (here's a hint, it involves paddles and a creaky bed frame).
The movie revolves around the growing rivalry between the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the bright young doctor, Carl Jung, who puts that theory into practice. The relationship is complicated by the arrival of Sabrina Spielrein, a young Russian patient whose mind is still tortured by the memory of her father's abuse.
But let's talk about the actors. Michael Fassbender, as you already know, held the majority of my attention with a moustachioed, but still painfully sexy face. I guess his acting was alright, too.
Viggo Mortensen puts in a convincing performance as Freud — not that I knew the man or anything, but he fits into the hazy picture I have in my mind. Hilariously, for a man who posits the sexualized development of the brain, the ominpresent cigar gestures at an oral fixation all his own.
The chemistry between the two was quite interesting to observe, as both men were portrayed (and probably were) as extremely rational men. Thus, the degeneration of their mentor-mentee relationship had everything to do with conflicting ideals, and the breakdown of their professional respect eventually leads to the dissolution of their personal respect for each other.
Vincent Cassel, too, deserves a mention; though his character did not receive a lot of screentime, his portrayal of the impulsive and very unrepressed Otto Gross, Jung's rival for Freud's professional respect, made for an interesting contrast. Deshabillé, the French actor looks positively bohemian with a scraggly growth of beard. I don't know, I found it charming.
But the star of the show was undoubtedly Keira Knightley as Sabrina Spielrein. She did this weird thing with her jaw, forcing it out and giving herself a severe underbite, that made her portrayal of the half-mad Russian patient all the more disturbing.
On a side note, try doing this at home. The way it transforms your face is truly frightening. It's a great party trick.
The casting for this movie is pretty impeccable, though again, I think the direction of it could have been a bit smoother.
It's not necessarily a movie I would watch again, but it certainly provoked some thoughts. The mentor to rival relationship Freud had with Jung definitely worked as the highlight of the movie.
All in all, my prognosis is that A Dangerous Method makes for a pretty interesting hour and a half. Whether that hour and a half is spent thinking about the anal stage of psychoanalysis or the way Keira's jaw pops out is up to you.
