A Dangerous Method is David Cronenberg’s telling of how Carl Jung became first Sigmund Freud’s disciple and then his rival. It’s an interesting story, chiefly because Jung was treating a patient who then became his lover and a psychoanalyst herself.
What keeps A Dangerous Method from being a really good movie is that Michael Fassbinder really can’t find a way to play a reserved and repressed character in a way that is really interesting (even when he has strapped Keira Knightly to the bed for a good spanking). Fassbender isn’t bad, he just plays Jung as a stick-in-the-mud who reacts those around him.
And there’s plenty to react to. Who knew Viggo Mortensen could be so funny as a sly Freud? Vincent Cassell is hilarious as a psychoanalyst-turned-patient who espouses having sex with many many people as possible, even one’s own patients.
And then there’s Keira Knightly, whose uninhibited performance as a patient of Jung’s has gotten much attention, some positive. I’m not sure what she could have done differently, given that she plays a character initially afflicted with hysterical seizures and finally able to relish a heavy dose of masochistic sex. But a viewer tends to sit and say, “Look! There’s Keira Knightly spazzing out and writhing and grunting!”.
Still Cronenberg kept the story moving along, and it’s worth a viewing just for Viggo and Vincent (and voyeuristically for Keira).
