REVIEW: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012): Written and directed by: Lorene Scafaria. Starring: Steve Carrell, Keira Knightley and Martin Sheen. Rated R (Drugs, language and some shocking violence). Running time: 101 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

A massive asteroid is on a collision course for Earth and humanity has only three weeks left in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which sort of reimagines The Road as a mainstream road trip comedy, an idea that is far more successful than may initially sound.

In the opening scene, Dodge Peterson (Steve Carrell) learns mankind’s last hope of destroying the asteroid has failed and that the countdown is now official: In three weeks, Earth will be reduced to rubble. Upon hearing the news, his wife doesn’t hesitate. She bolts, leaving behind an unhappy marriage and Dodge, now single and alone as he faces a strange new world.

Life on Earth, needless to say, goes berserk. Cell phone towers shut down, commercial airliners stop flying and most people who haven’t already killed themselves make a mad dash to cross everything off their bucket list. There are riots and orgies and ample opportunities to try all the hard drugs you were always curious about.

But Dodge can’t quite get into the spirit of the insanity. He wants to spend his final days with the love of his life, a title that apparently no longer (and probably never did) describe his wife. He meets Penny (Keira Knightley), a twentysomething Brit who lives in his apartment building. They strike up a friendship because they seem to each other like kindhearted, reasonable people in a world that has suddenly become the opposite.

They learn they have something in common. Dodge wants to reconnect with his high school sweetheart – he has always regretted not marrying her when he had the chance – but he hasn’t a clue where to find her. Penny desperately wishes she could be with her family in London – she always ditched them in favor of spending time with whatever schmuck she was dating at the time – but she missed the last plane out of the United States. They will both be alone when the asteroid hits.

When riots break into their building, Dodge hatches a plan. He knows someone with a plane who can take her to her family. She has a car and can drive him to the childhood home of his old flame where he hopes to learn more about her present whereabouts. If she takes him to the house, he’ll take her to the plane. And so they embark on a trip through New Jersey, picking up a dog alone the way (a needless but undeniably adorable inclusion).

Occasionally, the movie takes a narrative shortcut – they conveniently pass through the neighborhood of an old friend who supplies a working car, access to a satellite phone, etc. – for which it may be forgiven; the end is nigh after all and time is short.

The script focuses more on character development, allowing the friendship between Dodge and Penny to gradually blossom. Typically, when two big stars of opposite sexes share marquee billing in a film, it is assumed their characters will fall in love. A few contrived obstacles might stall them but we understand that these are tedious delays of the inevitable. This is not quite the case in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. The possibility of a romance floats in the air but the movie doesn’t force it. They might fall for each other, they might not. Mostly, Dodge and Penny have bigger concerns and we spend the majority of the film getting to know them as they get to know each other.

Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley create a believable relationship. Mr. Carrell in particular has proven himself to be an actor of surprising range. He often plays everyday types we feel we know – an incompetent but well-intentioned boss, a comic-book collecting social-phobe – but he is capable of broader comedy as well. Here he plays a sedate and melancholic man who, aside from the occasional swig of a cough syrup and vodka cocktail, is keeping a good sense of humor given the situation. Ms. Knightley is convincing and charming as a flighty spirit who sees her fickle and indecisive lifestyle with new perspective in light of humanity’s impending doom.

Writer/director Lorene Scafaria nimbly walks a tightrope with regard to the film’s tone. The early portions are dressed in some very funny, darkly comic gags but by the end, the movie reveals its ooey-gooey sentimentality. When we get there though, the film has earned the right to be sentimental because we are invested in the characters and care about them. A divergent scene between Dodge and his father (Martin Sheen) feels a bit hollow, as though it was cobbled together from father-son conversations in other movies, but the misstep is brief.

Watching the film, I was reminded of last year’s 50/50 about a young man grappling with cancer, another life-affirming movie that finds a warm and inviting tone in grim subject matter. 50/50 is hardly the most emotionally raw film made about cancer but it is certainly one of the funniest and most enjoyable, and achieves this without sacrificing authenticity. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World does something similar for the end of days.

The characters in Seeking a Friend alternately riot, party, pray, weep and love in reaction to news of the world’s demise and today’s filmmakers appear to be taking similarly varied approaches to the subject. Some craft bleak and beautiful tragedies, others make overblown action blockbusters. Lorene Scafaria has made a charming and clever romantic comedy. I suppose the apocalypse is what you make it.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/25/12

REVIEW: A Dangerous Method

A Dangerous Method (2011): Dir. David Cronenberg. Written by: Christopher Hampton, based on his play The Talking Cure, based on the book A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr. Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Vincent Cassel. Rated R (Some kinky sex). Running time: 94 minutes. 

3 ½ stars (out of four)

Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were masters of the human psyche so it should come as no surprise that their own unconscious minds were as subject to analysis as any of their patients’. The revolutionary field of psychoanalysis, referred to at the turn of the century as “the talking cure,” brought in a new era of self-awareness and its founders were perhaps more prone than anyone to scrutinize their every thought and desire.

A Dangerous Method, directed by David Cronenberg and adapted by Christopher Hampton from his own stage play, introduces Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) as he tests his “talking cure” on a newly admitted patient named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly), a ravenous young Russian woman prone to fits and spasms. In a single whirlwind session, he gets her to discuss her childhood experience being spanked by her father. The spankings, she confesses to Jung, excited her.

Enter Freud, played with dignified stoicism by Viggo Mortensen and rarely seen not smoking a classically phallic cigar. Jung visits Freud’s Vienna home to discuss their research and is thrilled to find an intellectual advisor with whom he can discuss his radical ideas. Freud takes him on as a mentor or rather, as Jung more explicitly describes their relationship, Jung takes Freud on as a “father figure.” Their friendship begins to wane, however, when Jung takes interest in subjects Freud dismisses as mysticism. Freud fears interest in a field such as telepathy will only fuel skeptics’ criticism of their work.

On these topics and others Freud and Jung engage one another and the film is loosely structured around a series of conversations between them and between Jung and Spielrein. Sometimes they discuss their ideas in speculative theoretical terms; sometimes they apply their theories to their own dreams and feelings.

The fun of these conversations is watching these historical characters influence one another, not only in their academic work but in their personal lives. A wonderfully slimy Vincent Cassel appears in a brief supporting role as Otto Gross, a psychiatrist Freud recommends stay with Jung for treatment. Gross is a married man and proud polygamist who sees no harm in sleeping with his patients. These so-called deviances, he explains to Jung, are simply part of the natural order of things. Why deprive yourself what you want? What your mind and body need? These persuasive ideas get Jung into trouble when Spielrein expresses interest in expanding their current physician-patient relationship.

Mr. Cassel also gets one of the film’s more audacious lines (and I paraphrase): “Perhaps the reason Freud is so obsessed with sex is because he isn’t getting any.” There are a number of moments like this in the film – a jolt of humor or an unexpectedly frank remark that reminds us of the unpredictable alchemy that occurs when two people interact. Too often historical dramas and biopics present their characters the way their public personas made them seem rather than allowing them to be vibrant, complex human beings as they are here.

The performances reinforce this. Mr. Fassbender’s Jung is a man of impeccable reserve but watch how a boyish excitement creeps into his voice when talking with Freud, or how emotionally vulnerable he becomes in Spielrein’s company. Ms. Knightley’s performance is a risky one; her facial tics and stuttering speech in the opening scenes are pronounced to an almost distracting degree but she pulls it off. Her choices are bold but consistent. In later scenes, after Spielrein has been treated, she still speaks with the cautious pace of someone who has no less than a dozen thoughts running through her mind and must sift through them to select the words that will reveal her true emotions the least.

Viggo Mortensen commands an austere presence as Freud, enunciating his words with the clarity and confidence of a man who does not think he is right but, rather, knows he is. This is Mr. Mortensen’s third consecutive collaboration with David Cronenberg (A History of Violence and Eastern Promises are the other two) and the pairing has thus far resulted in some of the best work of either’s career.

A Dangerous Method is rich with period detail and beautifully shot by Mr. Cronenberg’s longtime cinematographer collaborator, Peter Suschitzky. Mr. Cronenberg and Mr. Hampton also stay true to the period in more subtle ways. The film does not hesitate to explore sexual taboos of the era and makes reference to rising tensions between Aryans and Jews, including an odd premonition from Jung late in the film that seems to predict the coming World Wars. These unexpected wrinkles are what make the film so enticing. This is a succinct and relatively brief film (most of Mr. Cronenberg’s movies are) but leaves room for strange and pleasantly perplexing inclusions.

The ending feels anticlimactic at first but the movie never makes many major dramatic moves prior to this so a low-key finish is appropriate. The film is a study of relationships and the nuances and details of its characters’ interactions are what my mind continues to turn over days after seeing it.

- Steve Avigliano, 12/30/11