In “A Dangerous Method,” director David Cronenberg analyzes the men who pretty much invented psychoanalysis — which, in the hands of a director less intellectually rigorous than Cronenberg, would be a snake-eating-its-tail exercise in futility.
This drama — scripted by Christopher Hampton (“Dangerous Liaisons”), adapting his own play, “The Talking Cure,” and John Kerr’s book A Most Dangerous Method — begins in 1904, as ambitious young doctor Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) is ready to apply the “talking cure” of Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) on the patients at a Zurich asylum. His toughest case, and his first success, is with a crazed Russian woman, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who reveals to Jung a history of physical abuse from her father. She also admits that the abuse excited her.
Jung and Freud soon meet, becoming friends and ultimately rivals, as Jung’s bent toward the spiritual and the supernatural doesn’t jibe with Freud’s atheism. Meanwhile, Spielrein heals from her past traumas, becoming a colleague and Jung’s mistress — which gets pretty kinky, as her childhood experiences still cause her to connect arousal with pain.
Cronenberg and Hampton collaborate on a movie that deftly melds the clinical with the emotional, the dry theory of psychoanalysis with the messy practice of it. Cronenberg isn’t usually so dialogue-heavy in his films, but the themes are of a piece with past works (like his horror classics “The Fly” and “Dead Ringers”) about scientists taking their groundbreaking explorations to extremes.
What makes Freud and Jung’s intellectual debates fascinating is the byplay between Mortensen and Fassbender. Mortensen plays Freud as avuncular but also cruel, withholding favor from Jung when he dares disagree with his old mentor. Fassbender’s Jung is fascinating and contradictory, caring to Spielrein as her shrink but also reckless as her lover.
It’s too facile to say “A Dangerous Method” argues that Freud’s and Jung’s theories had as much to do with their personal battles as with scientific method, but there is a case made that the underpinnings of modern psychiatry are rooted in ideas conceived by flawed humans. I do not say this to denigrate psychoanalysis — after all, flawed humans created the Declaration of Independence, jazz and the infield fly rule.
Twitter: @moviecricket
www.facebook.com/themoviecricket; www.facebook.com/NowSaltLake
1 Comments
