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A Dangerous Method (15.)
Directed by David Cronenberg.
Starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel and Sarah Gabon. 99 mins
This feels like a walk through the vacated domain where a David Cronenberg film once stood. All the fixtures and fittings are still there – the cold analytical feel, the slow and steady pacing, the marvellously creepy score by Howard Shore – but in the middle of it is a complete void.
Cronenberg’s films have always been a tug of war between his deliberate, almost comatose style and their jarring, shocking content. Like a psychiatrist he wants to lull you into a restful state where you are more suggestible and responses to his uneasy visions are heightened. It is a daring method, and it requires a delicate balancing act trying to hold the audience’s attention.
For example, I rather like his flawed adaptation of Naked Lunch but I’ve never made it through without dropping off for a few minutes – and that’s got Mugwumps, bug typewriters and William Tell sharp shooting in it. This historical drama about Freud and Jung and the birth of psychiatry only offers up a lot of rather dry dialogue and a bit of spanking.
Set in the decade before the First World War, Christopher Hampton’s script, based on his own play, recreates the early relationship between Freud and Jung. Freud (Mortensen) initially sees the young Jung (Fassbender) as his successor until Jung starts to question his obsession with sex. Meanwhile, Jung starts to take a very detailed interest in the case of a psychotic Russian Spielrein (Knightley) who has numerous daddy issues.
The original play was called The Talking Cure and you’d guess that barely a line has been cut. They talk and talk and talk but to no real end. It’s a fascinating subject but this never coalesces into compelling drama. The movie feels like the dramatic reconstruction scenes from a BBC4 programme on the subject, but without the documentary bits where their relevance is explained.
The 19 year age gap between Fassbender and Mortensen exactly mirrors that between their characters but it doesn’t translate on the screen: Mortensen indecent youthfulness nullifies the effect of any aging prosthetics and make up. They are as solid as you’d expect but even they seemed burdened by the weight of dialogue they have to slog through. As the third part of the triangle Knightley performance is brave, bordering on calamitous. With bulging eyes, jutting chin and a wandering Russian accent, whenever she throws herself into a psychotic episode she resembles a Chekhovian sister succumbing to the urge to do a Norman Wisdom impression.
Review of Maps to the Stars
Cosmopolis
Antiviral
Directed by David Cronenberg.
Starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel and Sarah Gabon. 99 mins
This feels like a walk through the vacated domain where a David Cronenberg film once stood. All the fixtures and fittings are still there – the cold analytical feel, the slow and steady pacing, the marvellously creepy score by Howard Shore – but in the middle of it is a complete void.
Cronenberg’s films have always been a tug of war between his deliberate, almost comatose style and their jarring, shocking content. Like a psychiatrist he wants to lull you into a restful state where you are more suggestible and responses to his uneasy visions are heightened. It is a daring method, and it requires a delicate balancing act trying to hold the audience’s attention.
For example, I rather like his flawed adaptation of Naked Lunch but I’ve never made it through without dropping off for a few minutes – and that’s got Mugwumps, bug typewriters and William Tell sharp shooting in it. This historical drama about Freud and Jung and the birth of psychiatry only offers up a lot of rather dry dialogue and a bit of spanking.
Set in the decade before the First World War, Christopher Hampton’s script, based on his own play, recreates the early relationship between Freud and Jung. Freud (Mortensen) initially sees the young Jung (Fassbender) as his successor until Jung starts to question his obsession with sex. Meanwhile, Jung starts to take a very detailed interest in the case of a psychotic Russian Spielrein (Knightley) who has numerous daddy issues.
The original play was called The Talking Cure and you’d guess that barely a line has been cut. They talk and talk and talk but to no real end. It’s a fascinating subject but this never coalesces into compelling drama. The movie feels like the dramatic reconstruction scenes from a BBC4 programme on the subject, but without the documentary bits where their relevance is explained.
The 19 year age gap between Fassbender and Mortensen exactly mirrors that between their characters but it doesn’t translate on the screen: Mortensen indecent youthfulness nullifies the effect of any aging prosthetics and make up. They are as solid as you’d expect but even they seemed burdened by the weight of dialogue they have to slog through. As the third part of the triangle Knightley performance is brave, bordering on calamitous. With bulging eyes, jutting chin and a wandering Russian accent, whenever she throws herself into a psychotic episode she resembles a Chekhovian sister succumbing to the urge to do a Norman Wisdom impression.
Review of Maps to the Stars
Cosmopolis
Antiviral