Directed by: David Cronenberg
Written by: Christopher Hampton
Cast: Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel
Cronenberg and period – nay, drawing room– drama seems like an awkward mix from the get-go, and A Dangerous Method is never quite comfortable in its skin. Nonetheless, this account of the friendship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung is an intriguing piece of film-making, possessed of a mannered majesty that’s evocative of Sidney Lumet at his best.
It’s easy to see why Cronenberg was fascinated by the raw material. Freud and Jung fathered the twentieth century’s obsession with psychoanalysis between them. As pioneers in their field, they made a lot of it up as they went along: Freud especially was prone to manipulating case studies to fit his theories. Both men also dug deep into their own psyches and experience in order to justify their thinking, and this is where A Dangerous Method finds itself on fertile ground. Biographical detail from these men’s lives touched not only their friends and patients, but shaped the terms by which we describe the modern mind. It’s a story that needs to be probed.
Eschewing a typical Hollywood narrative, Christopher Hampton’s script (adapted from his own stageplay) delivers a series of static, dialogue-heavy vignettes that illustrate key moments of intersection between the two men’s lives and thought processes. At the outset, Jung (Michael Fassbender) is a youthful doctor, in awe of Freud and his “talking cure”, determined to test its efficacy on a hysterical patient, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) who has been dragged kicking and screaming into the sanatorium where he works. As he observes Sabina’s frantic self-loathing (she describes herself as “vile and filthy and corrupt”, and yearns to be spanked) his eyes light up with the prospect of scientific breakthrough – and the letters he can write to his idol about the treatment of “Sabine S.”
Once Sabina shows some progress, emerging as an intelligent, articulate young woman who has aspirations to be a psychiatrist herself, Jung and his devoted wife Emma (Sarah Gadon) take a trip to Vienna to tell Freud (Viggo Mortensen) all about the power of “psych-analysis”. This meeting of the minds has passed into legend, purportedly lasting thirteen hours, and it provides the foundation for their scientific and personal relationship in the years to come.
While Freud, at 50, is set in his ways at this point, preferring accolades to questions, Jung is still open-minded about what the study of the human mind might entail. At Freud’s behest, he takes the free-thinker Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel) as a patient. Jung is blindsided by some of Gross’s insights into his own psychological shortcomings (Physician, heal thyself!), especially the observations on sex and repression. Jung feels himself torn in two; on one side beautiful, dutiful Emma, on the other, fierce and intelligent Sabina. Breaching everything he believes about doctor/patient protocol, Jung inevitably succumbs to Sabina’s sadomasochistic desires. In doing so, Jung falls from grace with his master, yet manages to achieve a deeper understanding of human nature during his dive.
Mortensen proves his versatility as a cigar-chomping Freud who sees no paradox in his insistence that sex is the wellspring of the human mind while he remains so prudish in his personal attitudes. He enunciates Hampton’s dry, intellectual dialogue with relish, and his sparring with Fassbender, as the two men analyze each other’s dreams – and perceive weaknesses – is one of the great pleasures of the movie. There are plenty of contrasts drawn between the two men; Freud, the Jew, is always aware that his friend’s Aryan privilege drives a social wedge between them, while Jung berates Freud for his insistence that science is all and God just an illusion. Their connection foreshadows the central dilemmas of the twentieth century.
Knightley’s performance is problematic. Her grotesque gurning seems to represent cerebral palsy rather than hysteria, and she fails to convince as Sabina The Mad. However, when it comes to depicting the blue-stocking student discussing her thesis, there’s an engaging depth and intelligence to her work. By rights, Sabina should be the protagonist, as she is in the stageplay, and other dramatizations of the story; it begins and ends with her, and her character undergoes the most significant transformation. Cronenberg and Hampton decided to focus on Jung this time out, which unfortunately keeps pulling us away from Sabina and leaves the movie without an emotional core. Art mirrors history, as her contribution to psychiatric thought is minimized even in this retelling, with Jung dominating center stage.
It’s always a joy to see movie-making with this level of historical clarity. Some scenes were filmed in Freud’s Vienna house, and in the famous Café Sperl in the city, as well as in the period gardens at the Belvedere Museum, where Freud was wont to take his morning strolls (past bare-breasted statues, although he wonders aloud where his inspiration comes from). Authenticity is never an issue. Fassbender and Mortensen trade bon mots across a faithful reproduction of Freud’s study, all dark-wood panels and cluttered with artifacts and fertility statuettes. Yet the constant attention to detail, the wry humor and the representation of the main players in their own words (much of the dialogue and voice-over is drawn directly from correspondence between the three) becomes alienating. It encourages diagnosis rather than engagement, keeps the audience aloof. Jung and Sabina’s relationship is revealed to us as a matter for scientific conjecture (with an earnest spanking session reflected in a mirror) rather than explored as a mistimed but nonetheless passionate love.
A Dangerous Method is a cool not-quite-masterpiece that serves admirably as a sequence of history lessons, but falls short when it comes to emotional insight into what drove these seminal minds.
