Film Review: A Dangerous Method

From the director of Videodrome, The Fly and Naked Lunch we have come to expect visceral cinema with oodles of body horror to make us truly uncomfortable, but in the past few years, specifically with A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg has veered toward a more intense scrutiny of the reasoning behind his characters' sometimes brutal actions.

Perhaps it is the involvement of actor Viggo Mortensen, but, whatever the case may be, it seems the director has entered a new phase of his career in which character development trumps gross-out visual spectacle. This evolution is important to keep in mind when discussing the content of A Dangerous Method, since it has to do with a quest for a more complete understanding of an individual, and who better to act as our Virgilian guides in this underworld of the subconscious than the two founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud?

Mortensen stars as the bearded granddaddy, Freud, but the film rather belongs to his sometime disciple and intimate confidante, Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), who is on his own path of both sexual and intellectual discovery because of his attachment to a young Russian woman named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who, suffering fits of hysteria and grotesque convulsions, is put under his care at the Burghölzli clinic in Zurich in the summer of 1904.

It is a testament to Knightley's dedication that we slowly but surely become intrigued by Sabina's predicament: She has a magnetic energy that shines through despite her childhood trauma, odd speech patterns, full-body spasms and intense sexual masochism. Jung is attracted to her, but his wife is expecting their first baby and he does not allow himself to act upon his desires; this choice of repression over sexual freedom is one that sends him into a gray territory of confusion that will eventually contribute to a protracted struggle with depression.

A meeting with his hero, professor Freud, serves as a major stepping stone in his career, though the conversation is slightly tainted by the fact that he, for the moment, still idolizes the celebrated founder of psychoanalysis, who seems to have a very morbid obsession with cigars.

Though it is likely only hearsay, Freud famously claimed, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," and Cronenberg does hint at sexual tension between all parties in the triangle made up by Freud, Jung and Sabina. One of the film's most poignant moments, understated yet very effective, is Freud's face when he realizes, with great surprise, he won't be sharing a bunk with Jung during their trip on a steamship to the United States.

However, all the way through, the film is remarkably restrained in its depiction of these psychoanalysts and approaches them with the utmost seriousness; besides the constant presence of water, which can signify the subconscious, the film is interested more in Jung's own struggle for truth and his need to cut the umbilical cord that ties him to Freud than in the potential to fill the screen with unnecessary symbols. The world on screen is, after all, supposed to be the real world, not a dream.

"There must be more than one engine to the universe," says Jung in opposition to Freud's hypersexualized interpretation of every problem, and it is difficult not to share his frustration with this passive-aggressive old sage, who is visibly weighed down by his intellect and projects his own arrogance onto Jung, whom he sees as a traitor to their cause.

A Dangerous Method contains multiple scenes of epistolary exchanges, communicated in voiceover, between the three characters and the rest of the film is mostly dialogue-driven and devoid of any serious action, which makes the film drag unnecessarily. Jung is the main character, but scenes in which he plays the part of Sabina's fantasy father who beats her while she screams lasciviously on the bed do not provide much illumination as to his own motives for engaging in such behavior.

All the actors deliver exemplary performances, and the story, which spans nearly a decade and is presented in stunning, crisp images, provides a worthwhile window into the lives of these remarkable figures who were only human, after all. A little more time on the couch, however, would have afforded us a much better understanding of the characters.

André Crous can be reached at
acrous@praguepost.com