Yesterday
I worked my first shift as a volunteer running the film projector at
the local arthouse theater Provadja, something I will now do each
Wednesday evening. I had an easy start, playing only one film,
whereas for the next two months it will be three a night. The film in
question was David Cronenberg's second to most recent film, A
Dangerous Method, a movie I had wanted to see in regular theaters
upon its initial release in March, but I never got around to do so.
That's the good thing about this new job, I get another chance to see
arthouse, or generally good quality, films I missed the first time (I
don't think I'll get another shot at Piranha 3DD though, which
has now left movie theaters much to my chagrin), since Provadja gets
a lot of these as their weekly movie a few months down the road.
Projecting the film was a real piece of cake, thanks to the
advantages of digital projection (that same progress got me kicked
out of the operator's booth at Pathé though, so it's not all fun and
laughs), and I had a fair sized audience of no less than fourteen
people (the room the movie played at can hold about 45). If you're
lucky, you can watch the whole film from the projector's booth, but
sadly, I needed to occasionally focus on other chores, so I missed
about 15 minutes, which included a few important scenes here and
there. Having missed those, I can't honestly write a full review of
this film (that would be a rather dangerous method for any critic),
so I'll have to make due with some more general observations: after
all, despite not having seen it in its entirety, I still have an
opinion on the bits I did get to see, which lead me to believe that A
Dangerous Method would be rated by me as about ****/*****, 7or 8
out of 10.
It's
fascinating to see how much David Cronenberg has shifted towards
other genres. He's still best known as the director of usually
extremely graphic horror films, the foremost expert on 'bodily
horror', i.e. playing with, deforming or metamorphizing the human
body to often shocking effects, having created various grotesque body
transformations in films such as The Fly (1986) – Jeff
Goldblum's DNA mixed with that of a fly, thus making him devolve into
a bizarre human/insect hybrid – or the even more disconcerting
Videodrome (1983) – James Woods equipped with a huge
orifice, quite explicitly resembling a female's naughty bits, in his
abdomen so he can insert and “play” videotapes in his body –
which for a long time was really Cronenberg's signature: if you saw
the shit he pulled, you immediately realized beyond doubt you were
watching a Cronenberg flick! However, in recent years he mellowed
quite a bit, increasingly shying away from such gory effects. Though
in his suspense thriller A History of Violence (2005) he still
applied a few brief moments of universal disgust (hence the
'violence'), it otherwise hardly felt like a Cronenberg film. Eastern
Promises (2007), a film in the same genre, even less so. With A
Dangerous Method, a film containing virtually no gore at all,
Cronenberg seems to have definitively broken with his status as a
director once considered an auteur of horror. In fact, the
body no longer seems to interest him, as he sets his sights
completely on the human mind this time: though not exactly new to
this subject matter – for example, Spider (2002) –
compared to the wonders of the body it's still largely terra
incognita for him. And what better place to start than with the
founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung?
In
examining these two noted historical characters, Cronenberg not only
treads on different subject matter, but also explores a genre he has
not worked in before, the period drama piece. This is his first
motion picture set in past times, but you would hardly notice his
inexperience since he proves all too capable of compellingly and
accurately portraying the pre-WW I era of Vienna and Zürich,
including excellent costume work and the occasional temporal
signifiers as beautiful early cars and horse carriages. Of course,
it's not all that impressive, since A Dangerous Method is
hardly a full-on historical epic and focuses on characters much more
than on their settings, but it's a good sign Cronenberg has no
trouble expanding his existing oeuvre to include genres he's as yet
unaccustomed to. A good start, and hopefully he won't be afraid to
turn his scope on the past more often, now that we know he can pull
it off seemingly without effort.
As
mentioned above though, it's the characters that drive A Dangerous
Method, and as such it's the actors portraying them making or
breaking the piece. Cronenberg has often proved to get stellar
performances out of the top actors in their field, and continues this
trend here, reuniting with his present day muse Viggo Mortensen
(their third collaboration in a row), as well as Vincent Cassel
(second time working together), while adding Michael Fassbender and
Keira Knightley to his already outstanding resumé of phenomenal
actors he has directed. The latter pair has the hardest job in
carrying the whole picture, but neither fails in this regard. In the
case of Fassbender, who portrays Jung, this was to be expected,
considering his status as one of the most sought after and popular
actors of today. Knightley surprises much more in her role of his
patient Sabina Spielrein, a young woman suffering from hysteria, who
soon turns into something more than just another case for the good
doctor as the two of them embark on a wild sexual affair. Knightley
maneuvers shrewdly from an out of control and insane girl at one
moment and a calm and perfectly rational woman the next, being both
disturbingly repulsive and sexually intriguing at the same time, and
thus an irresistable mark for Jung from a professional point of view,
and soon after as a secret mistress. Plus, Knightley seems to have
the perfect facial bone structure for this role, as demonstrated by
the way in which she alarmingly protrudes her lower jaw in her many
fits of rage. Fassbender and Knightley show to have ample chemistry
in their roles, initially as doctor and patient, and soon after as
lovers on more or less equal footing. Whereas Fassbender plays Jung
with the necessary decorum and stoic restraint in the former
relationship, he's seen as a more emotional and angry character in
the latter, being able to blow off some steam in her company over his
guilt ridden marriage with his bland wife Emma (Sarah Gadon), who has
an awkward fixation over producing male offspring with him, and his
ultimately tumultuous relation with his one time mentor Freud.
Together, Spielrein and Jung can be themselves, as they don't need to
ignore their sexual fantasies, such as Sabina's desire for spanking
due to a childhood trauma. We root for them because of their genuine
affections for each other, but certainly in Jung's case (he's a
married man with kids after all), abhor them for having taken this
inappropriate route.
No
matter how good Fassbender and Knightley are on screen together, it's
Mortensen who delivers the most impressive performance playing
Sigmund Freud. Mortensen, by now fully versed in Cronenberg's
routine, proves himself a genuine chameleon yet again, hardly
resembling anything we've seen him look like before, older and
fatter, smoking a huge cigar in every scene as if it's an actual body
part. He portrays Freud as an old man emotionally detached from
everyone, including his star student Jung, despite their shared
beliefs concerning the benefits of psychoanalysis, while also
wholesomely inflexible when the latter tries to convince him not
everything can be reduced to subconscious sexual desires. At the same
time we see a Freud who desperately means to cling to his acclaimed
social status and tries to weed out subversive elements among his
circle of (almost exclusively Jewish) associates in fear of all their
work being undone by his many enemies in science and politics who are
just eager for some controversy to take him out. Apart from the cigar
and the talk about sex, Mortensen gives us a whole new Freud,
refusing any relation with the usual cliché ridden versions of the
character we are so often unfairly treated to. Also noteworthy is the
fact Mortensen does not repeat his role from his earlier
collaborations with Cronenberg, not taking center stage this time in
favour of Fassbender. Undoubtedly the director and his favourite
actor realize full well they will work together again many times God
willing, and instead of pulling off a Burton/Depp on us, they know
they should explore different set-ups if their professional
relationship is to continue to prosper, instead of sinking into a
dreary routine of overly repeating their previous work.
Aside
from the acting and the look of A Dangerous Method, as well as
its place in Cronenberg's repertoire, I dare not say anything
conclusively about the movie, especially about its overall story,
considering I missed several sequences that seemed of great
importance plot wise. For instance, at one moment Freud and Jung
arrived in New York in good spirits, but when I returned five minutes
later they were back home and detesting one another vigorously. I
have no idea what went on there, but it was obviously a vital scene.
Overall I can say for sure that A Dangerous Method covers an
intriguing subject from an equally intriguing director who is not
afraid to try and reinvent himself, making the film look gorgeous,
and squeezing top performances out of his main cast. However, I did
get the feeling the film's plot was fairly predictable (and not just
because it's historic subject matter) and delivered in an overly
straightforward way, thus not the most exciting stuff imaginable or
presented to us in a really gripping, thought provoking manner; but
hey, psychoanalysis isn't for everybody. At least the fourteen people
in the room all responded in a mildly enthusiastic mood. Given the
average age of this audience, I'm sure this would not have been the
case if I had projected some of Cronenberg's earlier, more “visually
rebellious” (to put it mildly!) work.
And
watch the trailer here:
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