Review of A Dangerous Method (2011) by Tibor B — 22 Jul 2012

A rare Cronenberg film that centres around dialogue and ideas, although there is some mild body horror in the form of Knightley's committed recreation of clinical hysteria. Knightley does have the showiest role and the cynic in me suspects she took the role to gain some "serious actor" credibility with all its semi-coherent Russian accent and spanking-powered orgasms.

Jung and Freud, here an earnest Fassbender and a gruff Mortensen, are shown here as pioneers of psychoanalysis, known as the talking cure. The film is partially about how their different outlooks on treatment caused a rift, with Jung shown here as both more transgressive by committing sexual acts with a patient but also perhaps more of a humanist.

His belief is that psychoanalysis has the power to move the patient forward, rather than Freuds obsession with straightforward analysis, linking everything to sex. It's a bit of a shame that Hampton's script finds little in the way of dramatic momentum preferring to simply jump forward large chunks of time and simply rejoin characters and their developing ideas.

There is tension to be found in the juxtaposition of the intense emotions and perversions uncovered by psychoanalysis and the elegant and very formal controlled pre-WW1 society, but without much story arc there's some difficulty in sustaining interest in these, potentially very interesting, characters.