It all begins in 1904 with Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), in a really bad way: the young woman is admitted to a chic psychiatric clinic (not the dreadful dives where patients are chained up after electroshock therapy sessions).
After seeing her in romantic comedies like Pride and Prejudice or Love Actually (yes, I really watch anything…), we were familiar with two expressions from this actress: the smile and the nose crinkle. She masters both very well, but we quickly tire of them. After the first few minutes of A Dangerous Method, we can affirm that she can do much better when pushed: she is truly transformed, she acts with her whole body, twisting it, almost dislocating it, in short, she wonderfully conveys physically what the psychiatrist is trying to make her say, express, spit out (her father’s punishments, then the taste for torment).
The psychiatrist in question is Dr. Jung (Michael Fassbender, whom I didn’t know at all), a disciple of Freud. He is young, ambitious, and has a rich wife. He also has convictions, among which is monogamy. Would he have resisted the charms of his patient if the serpent had not entered his neat little life? Enter Dr. Gross (the excellent Vincent Cassel), whom Freud (Viggo Mortensen) sends to treat him, an advocate of freedom and earthly pleasures, even if they involve drugs, bigamy, and a substantial number of illegitimate children.
Dr. Jung wavers then yields; his convictions were merely theoretical. But he has others, which will lead him to oppose Freud, who wants to put sex everywhere and exclusively. Jung wants to develop his intuitions regarding premonitions and parapsychological powers. Nonsense, according to Freud.
There isn’t much to hold one’s attention in this film. We expected something deeper, perhaps more perverse, with David Cronenberg, but it is the love story that takes over. Under the pretext of staging the primacy of desire over reason, Cronenberg emphasizes the Keira Knightley / Michael Fassbender couple, whereas the Jung / Freud duo is far more interesting. Exchanges of letters read in voiceover, interpretations of a few dreams to justify the gentlemen’s profession—the conflict remains beneath the surface, even though it represents a major schism in psychoanalysis. But as the word “unconscious” is never pronounced, we ultimately wonder what we’re talking about…
The actors seemed very rigid; Mortensen’s features are fixed, expressionless, and he looks much older than Freud’s fifty years at the time. Fassbender is quite bland; this role as an ungrateful man deserved broader shoulders. Only Vincent Cassel is devilishly good, terribly subversive, but he doesn’t stay on screen for long. It all seems very academic in the end.
Some scenes seemed ridiculous to me, like those where Jung spanks his patient who has become his mistress (we get this twice…) and, at the end, when he recounts in 1913 his premonitory dream that actually describes World War I: it’s a distasteful cliché. Aesthetically speaking, it is, on the other hand, very successful; the image is bright, and the sets and costumes instantly create an era, down to its smallest details. However, there is one absolutely hideous scene, which is the boat entering the New York harbor: the computer-assisted image has a plastic finish that looks just repainted, and the boat resembles a toy in a fishbowl—a real failure!
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A Dangerous Method by David Cronenberg
Starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley, Vincent Cassel…
Duration: 1 h 39 – National release: December 21, 2011
.Vincent Cassel, Viggo Mortensen, David Cronenberg, Michael Fassbender
