A Dangerous Method is the new film from David Cronenberg, and his third consecutive film with Viggo Mortensen. Whilst Cronenberg used to make films like The Fly, or Videodrome, or even Crash, films which were different, strange, they dealt with great deals of subtext and imagery. The latest bunch of films though, A History Of Violence, Eastern Promises, and now this, are much more straight forward affairs, telling a story from A-B. Whilst this could appear to be a step backwards, it so happens that the previous two films have been two of the strongest of his career, it proved that he wasn't simply that freaky director. A bit like watching David Lynch's Straight Story, you realised the skill and the craft in his work.
A Dangerous Method looks at the story of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, the godfathers of analysis, and talking through your problems. It looks at their initial similarities, the things that drew them together, then the differences that drove them apart, it also looks at one particular patient Jung was treating, and the love affair between the two of them. Carl Jung is played by Michael Fassbender (the man who has been in everything these last 12 months), Viggo Mortensen plays Freud, and elsewhere in the cast you have Keira Knightly and Vincent Cassel. So with all this adding together I went in with fairly high hopes for the film.
The film, well it's not a mess in the way some films have ended up being, it's fairly linear, the story flows well, characters develop and all that, it's just lacking a certain spark that you would hope for considering everyone involved. One stand out for me was Keira Knightly. I've never really rated Keira Knightly, she was okay in Bend It Like Beckham, failed to impress in the Pirates of The Caribbean films, then did quite well in Atonement before being typecast. Here though she plays a woman tormented by her own desires and she plays it spot on; with more performances like this I could see Keira Knightly having quite the career.
The main thing I felt about this film was interest. I knew only vague facts about Freud, and less about Jung, and this film definitely added to my knowledge as well as making me thirsty for more knowledge (not because they left it incomplete, just because they whetted the appetite). There is a healthy level of humour in the film, mostly from Mortensen's quite stuffy Freud, and this helps propel the film along. So whilst this film was entertaining, with a great cast all on top form, a story that interested me, it wasn't quite enough, something I really can't put my finger on was missing, and it feels like an unfortunately missed opportunity.
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