A Dangerous Method

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Have you ever witness a hysterical person having a crisis? I haven't, probably neither have you. Could that be the reason why to some reviewers (including myself) the histrionics of Keira Knightley as a hysterical patient were embarrassing to watch on the screen? I don' know. 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. How far did they expected the sex scenes to go? to the point of impregnation of the female and posterior birth as its consequence? I don't know, I think that that was beside the point in this very serious movie and moreover, that kind of titillation should be look for on a different kind of movie. To me this was an excellent movie very fulfilling from all points of view.

Many have said that this film is about spanking. That seems as stupid as saying that Anna Karenia is about train spotting! It is sadly a very boring film that tells us nothing about Freud, Jung, Psychology,love or anything else. The acting is wooden, God even the spanking scenes are boring! Read Anna Karenia instead although it may disappoint train spotters but it has so much to tell us. How can anyone find a thousand words for such a banal rendition of the lives and ideas of the founders of psychology. An example of the inanity of the script; Freud and Jung are standing on the deck of an ocean liner approaching New York. We are shown a cityscape of skyscrapers. Jung turns to Freud and says "Take my word for it, we are looking at the future" Why did the chicken cross the road? to avoid passing the cinema that was showing this drivel!

I was ambivalent about seeing this film as I know so much about this story of Jung, Sabina and Freud that I can write a book about it myself. My fear was that they made some cheesy Hollywood-like version of the real story and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not the case. The meaning that the film conveys, in my view, is what the story was in reality-a paradox of how ethical violation and the trauma it caused Sabina co-existed with her healing, how two extraordinary men were so controlled by their egos that it didn't allow them to continue to collaborate, which slowed down the development of the whole field of psychoanalysis and how this woman (Sabina)was wiser and more enlightened than two of them combined. The only disappointing element of the film was Emma Jung's character. Their presentation of Emma was nothing like she was in reality and was disrespectful to her as a person, in my opinion. They portrayed her as a little homemaker, who needed nothing else except being a wife and a mother, and this is not even close to who Emma was. She was very ambitious, she was a practicing psychoanalyst herself and she suffered a great deal because of social constraints that didn't allow her to establish herself as a professional. Knightly's performance was superb, Fassbender was good too. Mortensen, in my view, was not the best choice for playing Freud but it didn't spoil the whole experience for me. I hope this film will shake up the psychoanalytic community a little bit.

This started very well, great cast, landscapes, scenography, characters etc. I loved the idea of to greatest psychology minds working together on improving therapy methods and changing the approach to curing people of their traumas and problems. Where i find the movie failed a bit is the story where the connections in the scenes are bit off. I got the feeling that it was jumping trough periods without any connection which i could put together. It seemed like there were years in gaps between couple of scenes where there wasn't any. Even if this followed only true life events of Jung and Freud it still leaves us with wanting more then just few dialogs and scratch on the surface of psychology treatments. Kinsey (2004) is a movie which is a good parallel example how a movie about similar subject can be and can be done brilliantly. Maybe movies about lives of both Jung and Freud are in order. So, all in all, i enjoyed watching it, everyone did a great job and gives you a good feeling after, it has minor gaps in the story which doesn't make you stick to the chair but definitely recommend it to everyone.

I would like to think that I appreciate the art of movies, despite the preponderance of dialog and the lack of exciting action. However, I have to say that "A Dangerous Method" is really one of the most pretentious and boring films I have ever seen. Despite that the running time was just about 90 minutes, it seemed to just go on and on interminably. And worse, there seemed to be no reward for the viewers who stayed put and watched patiently to the end. "A Dangerous Method" is about the history of how psychoanalysis began as a therapeutic technique for psychologically-disturbed patients. Psychologist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) gets sexually involved with one of his hysterical patients Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) as he tries to get into the roots of her hysteria. Since sex is involved, Jung's contemporary Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) also gets into the scene. Unfortunately the execution of the script by Christopher Hampton is as tedious as a psychoanalysis session. Even the sex scenes were devoid of passion and boring. You will not feel any compassion for any of these unlikable characters! Fassbender lacked charisma in the central role of Jung whom he underplays. On the other end, Knightley overacts severely in the first half of the film and continues to be irritating throughout the film. Mortensen was cast in a most unexpected role, which was okay in the most part he was on screen, but was very underwritten. Mortensen's past two collaborations with director David Cronenberg -- "History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises" -- were infinitely more satisfying than this tedious wordy lecture. This was definitely not one of Cronenberg's best.

I am a Cronenberg fan. I think a History of Violence is one of the greatest films ever made! I also think Eastern Promises showed what happens when a great Director pairs with an awesome muse. I anticipated this film eagerly but after watching it I was left with mixed feelings. Perhaps this is because the script was not as tight as that of the first two films I mentioned. It was never going to be easy capturing something as abstract as psychoanalysis on film, yet I can say that this film does ramble on at times and it is slow. A History of Violence was slow but the pay off was fantastic. Here there was no pay off. We were shown the lives of three great, complicated minds and that was it. After reading about the lives of the three central characters I can safely say that perhaps this was not the film Cronenberg should have made about Freud. He opted respectfully for the less dramatic and more factual and I think this sacrifice could have hurt what could have been another Cronenberg/Mortensen smash-hit. That said, I also think Keira Knightley was a mis-cast and Mortensen and Fassbender were as perfect as ever. Looking forward to the next Cronenberg flick. This wasn't awful but I expected more.