The phrase "it would make a tremendous movie'' has become a cliché among readers and fiction enthusiasts in general a long time ago. Plenty of stories would make a great movie and plenty other wouldn't and it's perfect like that. Filmmaking is not the ultimate expression of narrative sophistication. It's just the easiest one to consume. You know what I could've spent a lifetime without seeing a movie about? Psychoanalysis, that's what. Since it slipped its way into narrative engineering a long time ago, I don't see the point of making a movie ABOUT it unless it would be about how it sneaked into narrative engineering.
I have learned to trust David Cronenberg though, because of the years of wild entertainment he provided me, so I tentatively went into A DANGEROUS METHOD after a four years holdout.
A hysterical young woman (Keira Knightley) is brought to Dr. Carl Gustav Jung's (Michael Fassbender) for treatment. Jung is a student of reputable psychoanalysis inventor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and tries his mentor's approach to help his patient and it shows great success. So much that the patience transference becomes quite a weight to bear on his marriage. When Jung confronts Freud about the possible outcomes of a psychoanalysis, their respective visions of their profession clash and that's about it, really. Basically, there are the events that gave birth to what we know today about psychoanalysis.
I might've missed a subtle symbolic layer of A DANGEROUS METHOD, but I thought it was pretty standard by David Cronenberg's standards. It sure it a sexy movie for a period piece, though. Viggo Mortensen's Sigmund Freud is well-groomed a mysterious and has little to do with the bald cocaine freak we all know and love. Keira Knightley's Sabina Spierlein is curvy and luscious. Even the immortal Vincent Cassel plays a hilariously libidinal Otto Gross. A DANGEROUS METHOD is sexy but not very sexual. I have no idea why anyone would give Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung the MTV treatment, but there it is. It exists. Do whatever you feel like with that information.
Jung and Freud have never been so beautiful.
A DANGEROUS METHOD is adapted from a stage play titled The Talking Cure, by Portugese/British author Christopher Hampton. I have no problem believing it's a raw and amazing experience live on a stage, but it comes across quite like every other play comes across when adapted to cinema: it was underwhelming. It could've taking Cronenberg-ian turns at many moments, but it remained light-hearted and strangely concerned with accuracy over intensity. A DANGEROUS METHOD is a David Cronenberg movie that is not very Cronenberg-ian. It's not a bad movie per se, but it's a little tame. I can understand Cronenberg's fascination with psychoanalysis because it's such an important part of his work, but if you were already familiar with its concepts, there is nothing new here. A DANGEROUS METHOD is basically a sexy introduction to psychoanalysis.
I've been a David Cronenberg fan since the days of DEAD RINGERS and NAKED LUNCH, which both profoundly traumatized me as a kid. I consider his 2005 piece A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE to be one of the greatest genre movies ever made. Once every blue moon though, Cronenberg makes a movie for other reasons than traumatizing the children, such as 2002's introspective SPIDER. A DANGEROUS METHOD is one of these movies that really is more of a personal thing for David Cronenberg than an all-out attempt at fucking with people's sanity, something he achieve cult status for doing so well. A DANGEROUS METHOD is competent and accurate, but it's a weird movie you can skip without feeling bad about. It has no reason to exist if you're any familiar with psychoanalysis and doesn't offer anything a swift Wikipedia search doesn't.
I've been a David Cronenberg fan since the days of DEAD RINGERS and NAKED LUNCH, which both profoundly traumatized me as a kid. I consider his 2005 piece A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE to be one of the greatest genre movies ever made. Once every blue moon though, Cronenberg makes a movie for other reasons than traumatizing the children, such as 2002's introspective SPIDER. A DANGEROUS METHOD is one of these movies that really is more of a personal thing for David Cronenberg than an all-out attempt at fucking with people's sanity, something he achieve cult status for doing so well. A DANGEROUS METHOD is competent and accurate, but it's a weird movie you can skip without feeling bad about. It has no reason to exist if you're any familiar with psychoanalysis and doesn't offer anything a swift Wikipedia search doesn't.
