A Dangerous Method

A Dangerous Method
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Cronenberg
Produced by	Jeremy Thomas Tiana Alexandra
Screenplay by	Christopher Hampton
Based on	The Talking Cure by Christopher Hampton (Play) and A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr (Non-Fiction)
Starring	Keira Knightley Viggo Mortensen Michael Fassbender Vincent Cassel
Music by	Howard Shore
Cinematography	Peter Suschitzky
Editing by	Ronald Sanders
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s)	2 September 2011 (2011-09-02) (68th Venice International Film Festival) 10 February 2012 (2012-02-10) (United Kingdom)
Running time	99 minutes
Country	United Kingdom ‹See Tfd› Germany Canada ‹See Tfd› Switzerland
Language	English
Box office	$27,462,041[1]

A Dangerous Method is a 2011 historical film directed by David Cronenberg and starring Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, and Vincent Cassel. The screenplay was adapted by writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, which was based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: The story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein.

The film marks the third consecutive and overall collaboration between Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (after A History of Violence and Eastern Promises). This is also the third Cronenberg film made with British film producer Jeremy Thomas, after completing together the William Burroughs adaptation Naked Lunch and the J.G. Ballard adaptation Crash. A Dangerous Method was a German/Canadian co-production. The film premiered at The 68th Venice Film Festival and was also featured at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.^[2][3]

Set on the eve of World War I, A Dangerous Method describes the turbulent relationships between Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, Sigmund Freud, founder of the discipline of psychoanalysis, and Sabina Spielrein, initially a patient of Jung and later a physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts.^[4]

Plot

Sabina Spielrein arrives at the Burghölzli, the preeminent psychiatric hospital in Zurich, with a typical case of hysteria and begins a new course of treatment with the young Swiss doctor, Carl Jung. He is using word association and dream interpretation as part of his approach to Freud's radical new science of psychoanalysis, and finds that Fraulein Spielrein's condition was triggered by the humiliation and sexual arousal she felt as a child due to her short-tempered father's habit of spanking her naked. These conflicting feelings were compounded by her instinctive knowledge (imparted by an angel's voice, that "of course" speaks in German) that she had done nothing to deserve such a punishment and in fact that she may have been a stand-in for her mother in her father's abuse (since her mother was unfaithful, and even competed with Sabina's suitors for their attentions^[5]). Also, despite the fact that her affluent Russian family afforded her an exceptional education in preparation for university study, they had perversely neglected to teach her anything about healthy sexual relations, and she was a virgin.^[6]

Her intelligence and energy were immediately recognized and encouraged by Jung and Eugen Bleuler, the head of the hospital, and since she plans to study medicine they allow her to assist them in their experiments, including measuring the physical reactions of subjects during word association, to provide empirical data as a scientific basis for psychoanalysis and ameliorate the more sensational aspects of Freud's theories, which contend that all mental illness is rooted in childhood sexual experience, be it real or fantasy.^[7] She soon learns that much of this new science is founded on the doctors' observations of themselves, each other, and their families, not just their patients.^[8] The doctors correspond at length before they meet, and begin sharing their dreams and analysing each other, and Freud adopts Jung as his heir and agent, an essential Aryan ally against the prejudices of the European medical establishment.^[9]

Jung finds in Sabina a kindred spirit with a unique perspective as her self-awareness sharpens, and their attraction deepens in what was already well known at the time as transference. Jung's resistance to the idea of infidelity, and breaking the taboo of sex with a patient, is undercut by the wild and unrepentant confidences of another brilliant, philandering, unstable psychoanalyst who comes under his care, Otto Gross. He decries monogamy in general and suggests that resistance to transference is symptomatic of the repression of normal, healthy sexual impulses, exhorting Jung to indulge himself with abandon.

Jung finally begins their affair, which in the film includes rudimentary bondage and spanking Sabina at times. Things become even more tangled as he becomes her advisor to her dissertation; he publishes not only his studies of her as a patient but eventually her treatise as well. Her original ideas are rooted not only in her insights into her childhood trauma, but the intensity and conflicts in their relationship. Spielrein's thesis suggests that truly heroic, original creations can only emerge from the crucible of great conflict, such as the attraction of opposites and the breaking of taboos, and thus the instinct for creation is inextricably tied to a drive to destruction, and that these feelings and ideas are not restricted to sexual expression despite their roots in the biological drive to reproduce. This includes, finally, his refusal to give her a love child, which is the story behind the reference to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen operas: they see themselves in the legend of Siegfried, the archetypal Teutonic hero born from a forbidden union. After his attempt to confine their relationship again to doctor and patient, she appeals to Freud for his professional help, and forces Jung to tell Freud the truth about their relationship, reminding him that she could have publicly damaged him but did not want to.

Freud uses his knowledge of the relationship to bully Jung, who is planning to publish new theories quite different from Freud's. Jung is working on Psychology of the Unconscious, and his emerging theories of symbolism, archetypes and transformation are heavily influenced by the theme of Sabina's dissertation and their discussion of the Siegfried mythology but he does not cite her in publication, acknowledging her only in private, and Freud does the same, despite the fact that he welcomed her defection from Jung's sphere of influence. Freud subsequently produces Totem and Taboo, which in turn was influenced by his discussion of the same topics with Jung, and many years later publishes his version of the death drive, distorting Spielrein's theory into sadomasochism in the public eye.^[10] Jung throws off his mantle as Freud's "son and heir", and their friendship ends.

Shortly after Freud dismisses the new ideas expressed by the Fraulein Doctor in the local meeting of the new psychoanalytic society in Vienna, she marries another Russian physician, and leaves both men behind her. Neither man acknowledged publicly how she influenced them, for fear that their peers, and the public, would recognize what had happened between them.^[11] Although the small community of analysts and patients was quite incestuous, both intellectually and sexually, they were quite reasonably afraid that the radical new practice of psychoanalysis would be condemned by a less than enlightened public if their methods, and their weaknesses, were truly known.^[12]

Sabina Spielrein, by then a successful child psychologist and already a widow, was killed with her children by the Nazis during World War II.

Cast

• Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud
• Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung
• Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein
• Vincent Cassel as Otto Gross
• Sarah Gadon as Emma Jung
• André Hennicke as Eugen Bleuler
• Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey as Sandor Ferenczi

Production

The film was produced by Britain's Recorded Picture Company, with Germany's Lago Film and Canada's Prospero Film acting as co-producers.^[13] Additional funding was provided by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MFG Baden-Württemberg, Filmstiftung NRW, the German Federal Film Board and Film Fund, Ontario Media Development Corp and Millbrook Pictures.^[14]

Christoph Waltz was initially cast as Sigmund Freud, but was replaced by Viggo Mortensen due to a scheduling conflict.^[15] Christian Bale had been in talks to play Carl Jung, but he too had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts.^[16] Originally, the role of Sabina Spielrein in the screenplay was written for Julia Roberts.^[17]

Filming began on 26 May and ended on 24 July 2010.^[14]

A noted feature of the film is the extensive use in the musical score of leitmotifs from Wagner's third Ring opera Siegfried, mostly in piano transcription. In fact the composer Howard Shore has said that the structure of the film is based on the structure of the Siegfried opera.^[18]

Release

Universal Pictures released the film in German-speaking territories, while Lionsgate took rights to the United Kingdom^[19] and Sony Pictures Classics distributed the film in the United States.^[20] The film debuted at the Venice Film Festival in Italy on 2 September 2011, and is scheduled for general release in February 2012.

Reception

As of 27 March 2012, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 78% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 148 reviews.^[21]

Louise Keller reports from Urban Cinephile, "The best scenes are those between Mortensen and Fassbender...the tension between the two men mounts as their views conflict: Freud insists that sex is an underlying factor in every neurosis while Jung, interested in spiritualism and the occult, is disappointed by what he considers to be Freud's 'rigid pragmatism'."^[22]

Andrew O'Hehir's review on Salon.com notes that on the one hand Freud's "single-minded focus on sexual repression as the source of neurosis led to the creation of psychiatry as a legitimate medical and scientific field — one that was often resistant to change and dominated by authoritarian father figures." On the other hand, Sabina's effect on Jung, and "the discoveries they had made together, both in the office and the bedroom," including the potential in "a creative fusion of opposites — doctor and patient, man and woman, dark and light, Jew and Aryan," led to a falling out between the two men "over a variety of issues, most notably the scientific limits of psychiatric inquiry." ^[23]

In contrast, despite its exploration of "the way our subconscious works, the way we repress, and suppress, natural urges — the constant battle between the rational and the instinctive, the civilized and the wild," amid scenes of Jung's passionate affair with Sabina, the film "feels distant, and clinical, in ways you wished it did not," according to Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer.^[24] In an interview with The Daily Beast's Marlow Stern, Cronenberg himself is quoted as saying that those scenes were "quite clinical. These were people who, even when they were having sex, they were observing themselves having sex because they were so interested in their reactions to things."^[25]

Accolades

References

External links

• Official website
• Official US website
• A Dangerous Method at the Internet Movie Database
• A Dangerous Method at Rotten Tomatoes
• A Dangerous Method at Metacritic