A Dangerous Method

I found David Cronenberg's latest film, not a bore as I had been expecting and hearing about for months, but an extension of his foray into drama. Here, in A DANGEROUS METHOD, there is no overt act of violence that we've come to expect from him, but a buried fear, a buried dread, and a buried truth. We follow Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) at the birth of psychoanalysis. He takes in a patient who's been sexually abused named Sabina Spierlein (Keira Knightley). He decides to approach the patient with a method of Freud's which has not been tested. Sabina is insane, but through talking, Jung convinces her of her affliction, and she gets better. Innately though, Spierlein is very intelligent, and becomes herself a titan of psychoanalysis. But Jung develops a friendship that shifts to rivalry with Freud (Viggo Mortensen) who is electrifyingly convincing, and actually convinced me of his way of thinking rather than Jung's, which, I think, was Cronenberg's desire for me to end up with. The film worked anyway for me as Jung's life become engrossing.

I became riveted by his life, and by his struggles with a problem that was set in his mind as much as Sabina's problems were engrained in hers. Jung wanted to cure his patients, but Freud points out that such a thing is impossible, and that we are all prisoners to innate decisions. But there's even some mysticism that arises near the end of A DANGEROUS METHOD involving Jung's premonitions, but we see that his affliction was to succumb to Sabina, and that becomes the center of the film. Beyond this, the film is brilliantly shot, and Vienna looks stunningly beautiful. Keira Knightley reveals herself as yet another young actress who was robbed in the last Academy Awards, and stands with Elizabeth Olsen and Rooney Mara as a great young actress. Her portrayal of Sabina is crazed, but justifiably so, and as she becomes normal by the end of the film, her performance becomes more nuanced.

★★★★ out of Five