A Dangerous Method

Plot synopsis:
Sabina Spielrein arrives at the Burghölzli, the pre-eminent psychiatric hospital in Zurich, suffering from hysteria and begins a new course of treatment with the young Swiss doctor, Carl Jung. He uses word association and dream interpretation as part of his approach to psychoanalysis, and finds that Spielrein's condition was triggered by the humiliation and sexual arousal she felt as a child when her father spanked her naked.
Jung and chief of medicine Eugen Bleuler recognize Spielrein's intelligence and energy, and allow her to assist them in their experiments. She measures the physical reactions of subjects during word association, to provide empirical data as a scientific basis for psychoanalysis. She soon learns that much of this new science is founded on the doctors' observations of themselves, each other, and their families, not just their patients. The doctors correspond at length before they meet, and begin sharing their dreams and analysing each other, and Freud himself soon adopts Jung as his heir and agent.
Jung finds in Spielrein a kindred spirit, and their attraction deepens due to transference. Jung resists the idea of cheating on his wife, Emma, and breaking the taboo of sex with a patient, but his resolve is weakened by the wild and unrepentant confidences of his new patient: Otto Gross a brilliant, philandering, unstable psychoanalyst. Gross decries monogamy in general and suggests that resistance to transference is symptomatic of the repression of normal, healthy sexual impulses, exhorting Jung to indulge himself with abandon.
Jung finally begins an affair with Spelrein, including rudimentary bondage and spanking. Things become even more tangled as he becomes her advisor to her dissertation; he publishes not only his studies of her as a patient but eventually her treatise as well. Spelrein wants to conceive a child with Jung, but he refuses. After his attempt to confine their relationship again to doctor and patient, she appeals to Freud for his professional help, and forces Jung to tell Freud the truth about their relationship, reminding him that she could have publicly damaged him but did not want to.
Jung and Freud journey to America. However, cracks appear in their friendship as they begin to disagree more frequently on matters of psychoanalysis. Jung and Spielrein meet to work on her dissertation in Switzerland, and begin their sexual relationship once more. However, after Jung refuses to leave his wife for her, Spelrein decides to go to Vienna. She meets Freud, and says that although she sides with him, she believes he and Jung need to reconcile for psychoanalysis to continue to develop.
Following Freud's collapse at an academic conference, he and Jung continue correspondence via letters. They decide to end their relationship after increasing hostilities and accusations regarding the differences in their conceptualisation of psychoanalysis. Spielrein marries a Russian doctor and, while pregnant, visits Jung and his wife. They discuss psychoanalysis and Jung's new mistress. Jung confides that his love for Spielrein made him a better person.
The film's footnote reveals the eventual fates of the four analysts. Gross starved to death in Berlin in 1919. Freud died of cancer in London in 1939 after being driven out of Vienna by the Nazis. Spielrein trained a number of analysts in the Soviet Union, before she, along with her two daughters, was shot by Nazis in 1942. Jung emerged from a nervous breakdown to become the world's leading psychologist before dying in 1961.

Tags: insanity, psychological, historical

Review:
Michael Fassbender (Jung) and Viggo Mortensen (Freud) both performed seriously and insightful and Knightley captured pretty well the behavior of a hysteric person and then, her transition through therapy.The German locations where the filming took place were picturesque and the atmosphere was warm, theatrical, peaceful enough but rather slow at some points.
As a long admirer of David Cronenberg, I eagerly await each of his new films as if I am a young child on Christmas Eve. When announced that his new film, A Dangerous Method, had him working with Michael Fassbender and (for a third time) Viggo Mortensen, two of my favorite actors, as well as Keira Knightley and Vincent Cassel, I thought I must have been dreaming.
Adding on that the film was going to be an exploration into the relationship between Carl Jung (portrayed by Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Mortensen), the gods of psychoanalysis, and this had the makings for Cronenberg's masterpiece.
So one can only begin to imagine my dismay when, after a promising first act, A Dangerous Method turned out to be the most inordinately tame and pedestrian Cronenberg film in over thirty years.David Cronenberg made a name for himself in the film community thanks to his studies into dark, controversial topics of sexual obsessions and fetishes, so a story depicting the works of Jung and Freud seemed like a perfect fit for him, and I was hardly able to process how lazily he approached the minds of these men.
The first act felt like punch after punch (in a good way), with very stern, rapid dialogues detailing the sexual desires of Sabina Spielrein (Knightley), a new patient of Jung's.
Despite Knightley's hilariously hammy performance, which had me close to fits of laughter every time she unhinged her jaw or thrashed about the room hysterically, each scene sizzled with sexual tension and was nailed with precision by Fassbender's stoic portrayal.Anyone who knows the history of the story (or has seen the trailer) knows that Jung and Spielrein eventually engage in a sexual relationship of their own and I believe the release of this tension between the two of them is where the film starts to fall of it's axis.
After the incredibly intense and erotic first act, featuring a scene where Jung runs a test on his wife (Sarah Gadon) that is as gripping as anything in cinema this past year, the whole thing begins to fizzle out when that tension is released and it only becomes more and more flat as it goes on.Whenever Jung and Freud are in the same room together the film begins to light back up, as Fassbender and Mortensen engage in a tete-a-tete for the ages, both men succumbed by their intelligence and arrogance to the point where they refuse to see the other as their equal despite their claims to be doing just that.
It's always difficult to review a movie based on psychology because sometimes what's difficult to understand is too easily categorized as illogical or bad execution.I heard so much criticism towards the last movie by Cronenberg.I completely disagree with those bad reactions."A dangerous method"is a brilliant ,absorbing and thought provoking movie that boasts excellent performances by the three leading actors.The direction is great and Cronenberg once again shows his uncommon ability to tell a story in a very original way although the dialogs are sometimes hard to follow,probably due to its subject.But there are really breathtaking moments such as the scenes of the Spielrein therapy.This leads me to Knightley performance.It was a brave,shocking and terrific performance that it was criticized without a reason.I didn't catch all that hatred.She has always been so good("Pride e prejudice","Atonement" and "Never let me go")but here she left her comfort zone to bare herself and gives one of the most exiting performances of the year.Oscar worthy material.Fassbender was equally great in the role of Jung and it's a pleasure to watch this splendid rising A-list actor.Mortensen was good but I fear not as good as Fassbender and Knightley.Cassell is always Cassell.He's a good actor but he plays always the role of the daring man.I think that "A dangerous method" is one of the best movies of the year.It succeeds to transcend from his particular story to focus on the hidden instincts associated with the human nature.My vote is 8/10..
The result, first witnessed at the Venice Film Festival (after the film had allegedly been rejected by Cronenberg's fest of choice, Cannes), is an interesting but somewhat hollow entry in the director's admirable career.Ostensibly about the professional relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), A Dangerous Method is in reality more concerned with the bond between Jung and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a young woman sent to his clinic in Zurich since her mental condition is an ideal subject for his research.
The relationship between the three evolves in even stranger ways as time passes, with Sabina taking an unexpected place in Jung's heart...With its combination of psychoanalysis and sex, the story - perhaps familiar to European film buffs thanks to Roberto Faenza's Italian-language take on the same subject - has all the right characteristics to be vintage Cronenberg (hints of which are offered in the opening and closing credits via Howard Shore's music).
That having said, part of the blame can be laid on Hampton, whose screenplay only glosses over key details of the story, leaving us with a quite simplified, "safe" version of events (the sex is unusually tame and unchallenging for a Cronenberg film).The performances are a mixed bag as well: Knightley, stuck with the showy role, is unbearably OTT in the first 30 minutes, shouting and shaking endlessly before she eventually tones down the mania and focuses on finding the character, complete with a solid Russian accent.
Probably real hysteria looks like that but in daily life a witness won't feel what a film viewer feels when being forced to watch incessantly all those facial and body contortions on close ups.After those first over-sized and over-dramatic scenes, the film takes a very natural tempo either on camera work or in tone down dialogs, serene outdoor and indoor scenes, making a very well mannered, ultra civilized and fascinating film indeed.The professionalism of everyone involved in it is impeccable and the script sound as it could be for a one and a half hour film explaining to a general public something as complicated as psychoanalysis involving two of the most important personalities of the last century responsible to have revolutionized and changed the course of history in that field for ever after.Some reviewers criticized this movie as elemental, as too basic while I think it wasn't meant for a professional audience of top psychologists, but merely a very good piece of entertainment for the masses and at the same time with modest doses of knowledge about a theme that in general is unknown to the great majority and vastly complicated.Same goes for the criticism of some reviewers about the sex life of these people when it came to show them in bed doing their own Kamasutra.
A Dangerous Method marks the third film that director David Cronenberg had collaborated with actor Viggo Mortensen, casting him as the famed Sigmund Freud in a tale that examines the relationship between three prominent scientists in the early days of psycho-analysis, with the other two being Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), set in the early 1900s, adapting from the play The Talking Cure by Christopher Hampton, which in turn was based on the non fiction book A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr.
While one of Cronenberg's most accessible films as are his other Mortensen starrers in recent years, the story based on real people provides that compelling watch as it takes the viewer on a relatively scientific journey full of hypotheses and theories on psychosis, psychiatry and sexuality even, listening keenly on heavy discussions that even the layman can pick up, and stay engaged that I won't deny may be attributed to the charismatic cast who play their real life counterparts with aplomb.
Events that unfold and with scenes set in are based on real incidents, so that provides a bit of historical accuracy, albeit there's always that dramatic license adopted to tell a tale especially involving more private moments amongst the characters.Michael Fassbender, Hollywood's recent It guy, sets the stage as Carl Jung, who in his active practice in a Swiss hospital sees him introduced to Sabina the patient, brought in from Russia and having treatment by Jung using Freud's methods.
And this professional relationship turned rivalry under the most natural and expected terms, with Mortenssen and Fassbender disappearing into their roles thanks to heavy makeup, is what makes this somewhat like a mirror to our own personal life when we reflect upon our own friendships kept.But with Keira Knightley's Sabina Spielrein in the picture, it provided an additional complexity between the two men, especially when Jung breaks the doctor-patient relationship and enters into a more intimate, sexual one with Sabina, in a certain way also goaded and encouraged by Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel in a minor role), to whom some proponents of free love will credit him for that concept.
It's not an easy thing to do, and instead of physical violence as seen in the other recent Cronenberg films in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, this one sees more of a psychological tussle and one-upmanship between the three historical characters involved.Lush in production values to bring back the early 20th century with sets, costumes, and even an ocean liner thrown in for good measure, what will result in A Dangerous Method will be that spark of interest to read up more about the true life characters involved in this story, to dig a little bit deeper into the theories they created and the ideas they each support and differ from one another.
The result is a film I liked very much, even though I perfectly understand the complaints some people had against it.Independently of the credit brought by the spectator to the technique of the psychoanalysis, or to the respective theories from Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Jung (1875-1961), A Dangerous Method is a fascinating study of their points of view, perfectly expressed by two actors who take an absolute possession of their characters.
The film focuses more on the relationship between Jung and his Russian patient Spielrein, and not so much on Freud, so that was something else I wish would've been different.The film is based on John Kerr's book of the same name, and from Hampton's play ¨The Talking Cure.¨ Hampton himself adapted the screenplay for this movie.
Emotions, and psychological phenomena should have been maximized to its limit, bearing in mind the complex intellects we were appreciating, which mixed with the perfect situations, resulted in this neurotic frenzy of clashing minds, which are exactly the components of a great film.Now, reviewing some general aspects of the film, which are slightly less interesting than its initial idea for me, the acting, as i said, seemed brilliant to me, with a special mention to Vigo Mortensen, who in his few appearances showed a bright and egocentric Sigmund Freud.The story seems historically accurate and enjoyable, with some few cliché passages, which didn't spoil my experience.The ambiguity of psichi psicho analysis on this film (with its representatives, of course) left me some hours of thought.
A Dangerous Method plays out their burgeoning friendship and mutual respect as it expends towards jealously, judgment and finally contempt, bringing about an irreparable destruction of their platonic union.Although his presence is brief it is good to see Vincent Cassell back on the big screen, this time as Austrian psychoanalyst and anarchist Otto Gross, in a performance that is both crazed and humorous while being entirely satisfying.I'm sure a background in psychology and a thorough understanding of the work of all four leading protagonists would be advantageous but not imperative.
In other words, it's the ideas that mean the most here, rather than their physical signifiers (though there is also some of that here, too).The film details the professional relationship and personal friendship of Swiss neurologist Sigmund Freud (Cronenberg's go-to veteran, Viggo Mortensen) and a young psychiatrist at the beginning of his career named Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender).
It was an entertaining historical drama based on the relationship between Sigmund Freud (played by Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (played by Michael Fassbender) and Sabina Spielrein (played by Keira Knightley).When you go to a David Cronenburg film you expect a certain, um, physicality.
Unfortunately, I may not have truly considered why it was put off for so long.Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) is an upcoming and coming psychologist who has begun to use a newly developed method of analysis on hysterical patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).
As his relationship with Spielrein begins to take a sexual turn, his conversations with Freud start to breathe life into what we now know as psychoanalysis.Cronenberg has always evaded definition as a filmmaker, and his work here in A Dangerous Method is no different.
A look at how the intense relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) gives birth to psychoanalysis.You cannot beat Cronenberg in his element, when he is exploring his love of the clinical.
Keira Knightley's accent and overacting were a turn-off, but perhaps we should blame the person who cast her.What this film did more than anything was make me want to learn more about the real life Jung and Freud, which is certainly not a bad thing..
Adapted from John Kerr's 1993 non fiction A Most Dangerous Method: The story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, David Crononeberg's film plays as a sometimes engaging but oddly disjointed delve into the worlds of two of the 20th century's most celebrated thinkers.
After four long years we finally have a new Cronenberg movie A Dangerous Method is based on a novel/play/true events surrounding Jung, Freud, and their patient Sabina Spielrein.
It is beautiful to watch, a pleasure to hear (Howard Shore's musical score consists of 'arrangements' of themes form the operas of Richard Wagner with an emphasis on the 'Siegfried Idyll' which as a work with its own similar history that plays exceptionally well into this story), a challenge to absorb in the hands of director David Cronenberg, and a showcase for some fine acting.The film opens in 1904 with Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) accepting as a patient young Russian émigré Sabina Spielberg (Kiera Knightley) who is a tortured soul from a past abusive upbringing.
Even at his very worst, David Cronenberg always makes interesting films, and A Dangerous Method is no exception - there are some very memorable scenes, some superb acting (a given with Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Vincent Cassel, but Cronenberg really drew a surprisingly gutsy and total performances out of Keira Knightley) and especially some truly beautiful shots.
The storyline was all very fresh for me, I hadn't any previous knowledge of the subject before, but I found that you get the direction that the story is taking rather quickly, and it's interesting to see how psychology was handled in the past.The male cast in this film are impressive as well, particularly Viggo, he is one of those actors that playing complex characters just comes so easily, and the it boy Michael Fassbender is also his usual calm impressive self.This movie is extremely entertaining in parts, seeing Kiera convulse in agony and just be plain crazy is highly entertaining and will surely leave an impression in your mind.
"A Dangerous Method" pairs two good actors, Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen, with one not very good actress, Keira Knightley, in a rather inconsequential film about the rivalry between Karl Jung (Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) and the young woman (Knightley) that brought the two psychoanalysts together.It's an overly talky film, and director David Cronenberg, who you can usually count on to at least make his films visually interesting, does little to overcome the material's origins as a stage play (by Christopher Hampton, who also did the adaptation).
But I was entertained anywayas, probably because the actors are elite (yes, even Keira Knightley).The story makes jumps and it gets messy to follow and the psychiatry is great at first, but Im not super sure it goes anywhere.And the conclusions I get from the movie: Freud was confronted by his obssesive ways of thinking the Psyche (always in terms of repressed sex and agression) by the other two (Jung and Sabina Spielrein), but in the end he was right, giving the way those two acted and their acts were resolved.And from what I read, that wasn't a conclussion I should have from the period and the relation between these three..
"A Dangerous Method" takes a look at the intense relationship that developed between Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Vitto Mortenson) as Jung began treatment of a masochistic woman named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly), thus being the catalyst of what is now known as contemporary psychotherapy.So, you can imagine that this film is just a whole lot of kooky fun.If you find ninety-three minutes of psychological babble and flashbacks to psych 101 entertaining.Directed by the always odd David Cronenberg, whose films I have generally not understood, this time around, I simply seemed to have missed the point.
A Dangerous Method (2011) *** (out of 4)Interesting film for director David Cronenberg tells the story of the birth of psychoanalysis as Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) try to figure out the best way to treat a mentally disturbed Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).
Throughout the film I was being fed theories developed by Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).
However, thanks to great performances, particularly Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung, Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, Vincent Cassel as Otto Gross; I would point out Mortensen's role that was so different from the ones we have used to see.