A Dangerous Method: Crumbling the Mind, Not By Machines But Words

A Dangerous Method

Directed By: David Cronenberg

Written By: Christopher Hampton, based on his play The Talking Cure, adapted from the novel A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortenson, Kiera Knightly, and Vincent Cassell

Director of Photography: Peter Suschitzky, Editor: Ronald Sanders, Production Designer: James McAteer, Original Music: Howard Shore

Rated: R for psychoanalytical perversions

Read an interview with David Cronenberg, Christopher Hampton, and Michael Fassbender from the New York Film Festival

Cinema and psychoanalysis have a long history together, as the new technology and the striking new school of thought both began and evolved during the turn of the 20^th century. And since the 1970s, psychoanalysis has been used in film theory to explore cinema in new light, where characters once thought to be crazy are instead explored within their Freudian terms of wanting to return the womb or whatnot (Classic Hollywood seems ripe with metaphors for sex looking back).

            So what can we infer about the makers of psychoanalysis? That certainly sounds like an interesting question for David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, a stately and often involving piece on the history of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, as well as the woman that changed everything. On first appearances, Mr. Cronenberg, known for his more graphically violent films from Videodrome and A History of Violence, might seem like the wrong choice for this imperial work from screenwriter Christopher Hampton (adapting his own play The Talking Cure, which was adapted from the book A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr). But thematically, this is a work through and through by Mr. Cronenberg, who explores how an idea, the psychological, can transform, disfigure, and infect the body.

            The film is though, very much a talking piece, where the script lingers more than Mr. Cronenberg’s orderly and subtle approach to the work (those looking for directorial touches will certainly notice the way the director carefully constructs each composition with nuance, even if things aren’t exploding or bleeding). And with such dialogue, it is the performances that must carry the film, most notably Kiera Knightly’s intensely hysterical performance as Sabina Spielrein. Sabina comes to Jung’s care with a manic and uncontrollable body, as well as a horde of secrets waiting to be uncovered. Jung, played by the controlled and very astute Michael Fassbender, decides to take Sabina as his first patient to use the “talking cure” he’s heard so much about from Sigmund Freud (a hammy Viggo Mortenson).

            As Ms. Knightly withers her body in ways that seem inhumanly possible, most notably her unhinged jaw, Mr. Cronenberg keeps the camera extremely restrained and in line with Jung’s calm and collected investigation into Sabina’s past. As he begins to make progress though, he can’t help but involve himself in her personal life, as Sabina learns to become a psychoanalyst herself. Jung also engages with Freud (always smoking on a large phallic cigar) through a series of conversations and letters where they discuss their method of psychoanalysis, Jung hoping to explore the more supernatural side of the ego, with Freud hoping to stay strictly in the sexual.

            Despite the gorgeous work by Mr. Cronenberg, who keeps the frames in neatly order, even during the film’s not exactly graphic but still shocking S&M sequences, A Dangerous Method lacks any sense of narrative momentum or even intrigue. The limitations derrive from Mr. Hampton’s script, which is highly accurate (using much of the actual lines from the journals and letters of the three leads), but only pulsates instead of really throwing us in deep. The conversations between Jung and Freud will entice people interested in psychoanalysis, but are simply too stately to give a real sense of their shifting rivalry and ignore the real desires behind them. Additionally, Mr. Fassbender and Mr. Mortenson are a little too restrained in their conversations that put on that dry feeling that you follow their words but not their motivations, and the romance between Mr. Fassbender and Ms. Knightly comes through in the actions of the script, but rarely in the passion they show for each other. So when Vincent Cassell shows up as a ferocious and impulsive psychoanalyst his angry and ferocious performance, which might spell the themes of the film a little too easily, is a big wake up call for the film.

The problem, which may be blasphemous by some, slightly lays in the characterization of Jung, as well as Mr. Fassbender’s cold and calculated performance. Jung is seen as a man who is both aware of his impulses but knows how to control them, and even when he does give in, still seems cold. There’s no thrill of neither the work nor the romance in Mr. Fassbender, who has been such a thrill of an actor to watch in Hunger, Fish Tank, and even X-Men: First Class. Under the direction of Mr. Cronenberg, Mr. Fassbender lets control win over something more organic where his stately presence gives A Dangerous Method sucks the intrigue out of the film.

            Of course, restraint is the point, and Mr. Cronenberg’s worlds have often dealt with the chaos of new technologies destroying the control of the body. In a way, A Dangerous Method is most closely related to Mr. Cronenberg’s Videodrome with the idea of discussing repression replacing the consumption of media, as both take over and urge the body in unexpected ways. In A Dangerous Method, however, restraint wins in the end, and while the film is a fascinating examination of the early history of psychoanalysis, it’s a limited one that keeps its audience restrained as well, afraid of the impulses it might unleash if our true repression is revealed.