|
Welcome to Movie Reviews by
Joan Ellis
Search from a list of over 1000
reviews by title or by
single quotes.
Her opinions are yours to consider, yours to quote.
|
The
friendship between Freud and Jung ends in anger.
A DANGEROUS
METHOD
An Illusion Review by Joan Ellis
A movie that tackles a
controversial aspect of historical figures takes a big risk. A
Dangerous Method takes the risk but succeeds primarily in making us
curious about the backstory. Did Carl Jung, acknowledged heir to Freud's
experiments in psychoanalysis, really violate the tenets of his profession
by repeatedly indulging in a sadomasochistic sexual relationship with a
patient? How did Freud the teacher and Jung the student lose both their
friendship and their professional relationship? Is it remotely possible
that the patient could simultaneously have been Jung's patient/lover and a
candidate for a medical degree not long after she was carried in hysterics
into a mental hospital?
This movie
offers us one version of the answers, but there is a problem there. All of
us know of Freud's insistence that all human behavior is rooted in
sexuality. We know of Jung's insistence that the roots of trouble are
embedded in dreams. But the average person - of whom I am one - doesn't
necessarily know much about either man. One can say "oh, that was a fine
film about FDR," for instance, because we know his face, his expressions,
his deeds, and his philosophy. But Freud and Jung, famed as they are as
the fathers of psychoanalysis, remain cloudy as human beings. And so we
must judge the movie on its merits alone without pretending to know more
than we do.
Sabina
Spielrein (Keira Knightly) is carried screaming and contorted into a
mental hospital. She is visited by Carl Jung (Michael Fassbinder) who
urges her to go deeply into her father's abusive behavior - which she does
and which she says, with some shame, excited her. The staid and formal
Jung decides in short order to become the medium through which she can
relive that excitement.
Freud (Viggo
Mortenson) and Jung engage in a continuing exchange about their
experiments in the motivations that underlie human behavior. Jung denies
to Freud his involvement with Spielrein. When Spielrein becomes Freud's
patient, the friendship between the two men ends in anger.
Lacking any
real mental images of these characters, we impute to them the
personalities the actors give them, and in all cases, the result is
unpleasant. Jung's rich wife Emma (Sarah Gadon) is her husband's
stay-at-home baby factory. Keira Knightly's failed attempt at a
Russian/German accent undermines her credibility. Michael Fassbinder gives
no hint of whether Jung is troubled by his own transgressions, and Viggo
Mortenson's Freud seems as detached from his own emotions as Jung. This
movie comes across as a curiously truncated imagining of two men who were
giants in their field. Sabina Spielrein, who became an eminent analyst
after returning to Russia, leaves us grateful that we never knew her. If
you go, you will surely love the costumes and the filming in Vienna and
Germany. As for the story, it is an interesting but thoroughly unpleasant
and incomplete introduction to two important historical figures.
|
