I could have seen The Iron Lady. Instead, last weekend, I opted to see A Dangerous Method, directed by Canadian David Cronenberg, who gave us The Fly and Dead Ringers.
I’m not a fan of Cronenberg’s work, and I knew this was not going to be a lighthearted look at the beginnings of modern psychiatry, or in fact, a lighthearted look at anything. That is just not the Cronenberg way—I’m still afraid of flies!
Cronenberg gives us a look at the ever evolving and devolving relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortgensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Their friendship blossomed with Jung seeing Freud as a father figure. However, life choices and a difference in methodologies take them in vastly different directions and we watch the relationship decline.
Freud and Jung could not have been more different, Freud lived modestly with this wife and six children, while Jung had a wealthy wife who spared no expense to ensure he was not going to leave her.
To prepare for the role of Freud, Mortgensen visited Vienna, studied Freud’s habits, and even smoked the same cigars; the art department went so far as to obtain period pens for the actors—much of the communication between the two men was by letter.
The movie opens in Zurich in 1909, where Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly) finds herself sent to a mental institution at which the head doctor is Jung. Let me warn you, this show is all about sex (what a surprise, considering the subjects) and there are explicit scenes throughout. What is absolutely clear is that Keira Knightly is brilliant and Oscar-worthy as the damaged Sabina.
Spielrein’s evolution from insane to a talented psychologist in her own right is so incredible that it is mesmerizing.
Without giving the whole film away, let me say that Jung fell in love with Sabina with all her sexual proclivities while, of course, married to his ever-pregnant wife. But the show is deeper than just the lust of Jung and the unbending of Freud, it is about two leaders in a field not understood at the time, and often ridiculed, but without whom the great strides in the field of the mind would never have been made.
Jung outlived Freud, his mistresses (yes, more than one) and died in 1961 at the age of 86. Jung was psychic himself and suffered depression and it is hoped that we come away with a look at the whole person with all the angst, faults and genius that he was.
Freud and Jung took their work farther than anyone had ever done and as Jung says “gave a glimpse into the future of what the patient could become.”
There are many great lines in this show, but I liked this one: “Once they find out what we mean, they’ll be just as appalled.”
Still quoted, still questioned, often criticized even today, we have to ask ourselves: where would we be if they had never lived?
I give A Dangerous Method four reels out of five.
–– Susan Steen is a local non-profit executive and a movie buff. Her column appears weekly in the Kelowna Capital News.
