Review of A Dangerous Method (2011) by Jens T — 10 Nov 2012

David Cronenberg who's known for his psychological Freudian films like "Videodrome", "Naked Lunch" and "Crash" which proves Cronenberg's use of Sigmund Freud's theories, and it comes as no surprise that it was exactly Cronenberg that was going to make the film about the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) one of Freud's (Viggo Mortensen) academical friends who through the years seemed frightened of Freud's theory that every aspects of our subconscious evolves around Sex, theories that is hard to deny when Jung gets sexually involved with one of his patients, the Russian Jewish medical student, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).

For those who's not familiar with Freud's work, A Dangerous Method is a great insight to his theory, which no matter how crazy they sounds actually has some kind of truth, and we see it in practice. But we also realizes that we seen this in a tons of times before in other movies, only this time it's confirmed that our sexuality is unpredictable. Everything is about sex and it's the society that prevents us from being who we really are, and was especially hard in a "perfect" world which it was back in the early 20th century in which this film takes place.

I did pretty much loved both Fassbender and Mortensen. Fassbender is one of those actors, like Gary Oldman who can fit into every roles he plays, and Fassbender looks indeed like Carl Jung, like he was born to wear a mustache and spectacles. I was kind of surprised of how well Mortensen handled the role as Sigmund Freud. He was believable and it was hard to believe that it was Mortensen. But sadly, no matter what Keira Knightly does she's still Keira Knightly overacting. And specially the scenes where's she supposedly "psychotic" with all her twitching and screaming, makes the whole performance laughable, which it's not suppose to. But overall, it's a great film and a great analysis. Thumbs up.