Review - A Dangerous Method

In the early 1900s, the impetuous work of a young Carl Jung comes up against the older viewpoints of Sigmund Freud as the former tries to treat a hysterical woman who will eventually help them to define their own unique relationship.



A Dangerous Method is the latest film from Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, and is based on the 2002 play by Christopher Frampton, who also penned this adaptation. It’s a delectable set up, pitting the greatest psychoanalytic minds of the 20th century against each other in a bid to save the sanity of a young woman.

Better still, it has Cronenberg himself on board. Famed for his detailed depictions of body horror and insanity, he also frequently combines these lurid elements with an overt sexuality – creatures and characters both seductive and unpleasant, protagonists who wear their corruption on their putrescent and twisted bodies.

Filmmaker and subject seem like the perfect combination and yet A Dangerous Method is ultimately disappointing.

The basic drama is well wrought and the leads, Michael Fassbender as Jung and Kiera Knightley as (real life) patient Sabina Spielrein, are strong, while Viggo Mortensen makes for a mesmerising and curiously well mannered Freud, complete with some face altering prostheses.

It’s the direction that holds the biggest surprise; this is, to my mind, Cronenberg’s least Cronenberg film to date, bar perhaps the departure of 1993s M. Butterfly. In a film that spends a good portion of its running time listening to Freud and Jung interpreting each other’s dreams, the film never delves into these imaginings, never visualises the mental states of the characters. A lurid dream sequence or two would have done wonders for the rather dull pacing of the piece and would certainly have appealed to fans of the director’s previous work.

Perhaps it’s a change that Cronenberg has been moving towards for a time, A History of Violence certainly felt like a step towards the mainstream, while Eastern Promises, violence notwithstanding, was also not far from a regular dramatic thriller. But here, in a film starring Freud at the height of his powers, we find perhaps the least Freudian film that Cronenberg has ever made.

What we’re left with is a picture that feels essentially stagebound, a series of conversations between highly intelligent and sometimes mentally unstable people. The therapy/relationship between Jung and Sabina is given much attention in the early part of the film but soon fades into the background and even here we’re given a remarkably tame take on what should be a terrifically uncomfortable coupling. Cronenberg keeps his camera far away, dispassionate and even seems to find no thrill in the elements of sadomasochism which he’s previously mined so effectively.

A Dangerous Method is a interesting enough take on a real life case which helped to give birth to psychoanalysis as we know it today and the chance to see two masters of that science, embodied by two of the finest performers currently working, is worth the price of entry alone. But Cronenberg fans may find the proceedings a little dreary next to his former flights of twisted fantasy.