A Dangerous Method
A Dangerous Method
Format: Cinema
Release date: 10 February 2012
Venue: Nationwide
Distributor: Lionsgate UK
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Christopher Hampton
Based on the book A Most Dangerous Method by: John Kerr
Based on the play The Talking Cure by: Christopher Hampton
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen
UK/Germany/Canada/Switzerland 2011
99 mins
I would have been surprised if A Dangerous Method – about the rivalry between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, with the mediocre Keira Knightley playing the love interest – had been any good, but it’s always a shame when such a renowned director as David Cronenberg delivers something so banal. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from his own stage play, the film stars Michael Fassbender as Jung, who helped pioneer psychoanalysis with his mentor, Freud (Viggo Mortensen, the only good thing in the film). In this interpretation, Jung is an insipid, upper-class man, shackled by turn-of-the-century mores. He eventually breaks his ethical code when he starts having sex with his patient, Sabina Spielrein, a woman who suffers from ‘hysteria’ before being ‘cured’ and becoming a psychotherapist in her own right.
Beaten by her father as a child, Sabina has a thing for authority figures and masochism – basically, she likes being spanked, and Jung, once he gives in to his baser urges, seems to have no problem fulfilling her fantasies. If these scenes were meant to be titillating, Cronenberg failed; the underwhelming, mechanical film is mostly forgettable, except for Knightley’s tortured, painful acting. The film has received glowing reviews from other (mostly male) critics who have found something meaningful in the film that I somehow missed; personally, I can’t think of anything, except a perverse curiosity, to recommend it.
Sarah Cronin
Extra gripe from Greg Klymkiw: Sadly, no proper views of open palms connecting with buttocks or slap imprints on said buttocks are afforded to us.
So basically, this review is encapsulated by the ever true maxim “the critic criticises him (her) self.” No attempt is made to substantively refute this supposed pseudo-profundity that so many other critics and audiences see. No discussion of the themes, the historical context, the conflicts of values dealing with science, religion, sex and memory. Only a complaint that Cronenberg failed to make the sex scenes titillating enough. Bad flashbacks to a litany of EYES WIDE SHUT reviews about how unsexy Kubrick made the movie that a tabloid press turned into a supposed erotic thriller on their own. Oh well. One purpose of a review on the other side of the opinion spectrum is that it can make a viewer more secure on their own take. This one certainly did.
Thanks for your comment. I would just say that this was originally published in December as part of our year-end review. As such, it was intended as a precis rather than a full-length review, which would have no doubt tackled some of the issues that you raise.
The film certainly does seem to have split opinion.