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

REVIEW: Black Swan

Black Swan (2010): Dir. Darren Aronofsky. Written by: Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John McLaughlin. Story by: Andres Heinz. Starring: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder. Rated R (strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use). Running time: 108 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is being billed as a “psychological thriller.” The term certainly fits the film though it might mislead some to believe that Aronofsky has crafted a genre film. Black Swan is a haunting and often disturbing film, but its thrills come from within the mind. This is a horror film founded on ideas and atmosphere. Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a ballet dancer who might be losing her mind. Strange marks are appearing on her body only to disappear a moment later. She’s having hallucinations. Or are they really there? Once reality is questioned, the floor drops out from underneath her and the audience follows her on a quest to understand the unknowable and invisible forces affecting her.

Nina dances for a company in New York. Thomas, the company’s director (Vincent Cassel) has promised to feature her more this season and she has an outside chance of being cast in the starring role of Swan Lake after the company's previous star (Winona Ryder) announces her retirement. The part is a double role – the White Swan and the Black Swan. Thomas explains to her that while she’s the best dancer in the company and an easy choice to play the graceful and fragile White Swan, she lacks the Black Swan’s passion and sexuality. He has a reputation, however, for being romantically involved with his dancers and Nina knows how to play her cards. After some ethically questionable casting practices, she lands the part.

Nina’s mother (Barbara Hershey) is delighted by the news. She gave up dancing when she had Nina and has been living vicariously through her daughter’s career. She pampers Nina and we see why Nina finds the Black Swan such a challenge. Her bedroom is filled with her childhood stuffed animals and her mother still tucks her in at night. Between Thomas’s sexual advances and the stress of the role, her sheltered life is slowly crumbling.

Expediting that process is Lily (Mila Kunis), a dancer who has just flown in from California. She embodies everything about the Black Swan that Nina doesn’t – she’s flirtatious, passionate, relaxed – and soon has a strange hold over Nina. Why did she suddenly appear now, on the verge of Nina’s newfound success? Whether her arrival is a coincidence or a conspiracy, she becomes to Nina a professional and sexual competitor.

In a way, Black Swan has much in common with Aronofsky’s previous effort, The Wrestler. Both films follow a performer’s struggle to live up to expectations they’ve set for themselves and in both cases their performances are destroying them. Where The Wrestler was marked by a gritty realism, however, Black Swan indulges in surreal fantasy, a testament to Aronofsky’s versatility as a director. He casts a hypnotic atmosphere over the film, drawing the viewer in and maintaining its trance over the audience through the film’s final moments.

In Aronofsky’s hands, a small New York apartment becomes a claustrophobic cell for Nina. Lily briefly draws her out of her shell and takes her to a dance club that, after a few drinks and a pill, becomes a hallucinatory nightmare. This scene, one of the film’s best, is one of several mesmerizing sequences that draw the viewer into Nina’s perspective. We see and experience her distorted reality, unable to distinguish the real from the imagined. How much of what we see is a fantasy? A dream? Delusions? Real life? Would making such distinctions really matter anyways?

With this film and his earlier work, Aronofsky has proved himself to be a skilled stylist, making it easy to forget how much of an actor’s director he is. His past films have featured performances of the highest caliber (Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler) and Black Swan is no exception. Natalie Portman carries the film as Nina, balancing the character’s fearful anxieties with sudden dark turns. She also succeeds in the difficult task of acting while dancing. When Thomas criticizes Nina for being too tense and controlled as the Black Swan, we can see in Portman's face what he is talking about.

Also excellent is Kunis, who has found her breakout role here. She brings to the film much of the charm that marked her performances in lighter fare such as “That 70’s Show” and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and finds use for it in considerably darker material. Her Lily is seductive and cavalier, and makes for a compelling foil to Portman’s Nina. Barbara Hershey is chilling as the controlling mother, and Vincent Cassel brings the right amount of sleaze and menace to his character.

Nina’s surreal experience could be taken as a metaphor for the craft of acting. As her unusual transformation takes hold of her, parallels begin to develop between the play and her life. Aronofsky does not limit the film to this one interpretation, however. He deftly moves back and forth between fantasy and reality so that the viewer is not trapped into a guessing game of what is real and what is not. The only reality is that onscreen and we accept the disturbing power of the film’s imagery.

Black Swan is a relentless film and is so absorbing that one needs a few minutes to readjust after the closing credits roll. Each scene flows into the next to make for a nightmarish whole. There are brief moments of reprieve (the film occasionally has a bizarre sense of humor), but even these maintain the film's grasp on the viewer. Black Swan is indeed a thriller, one that explores the tenuous nature of identity and reveals how fragile the mind’s hold on that identity can be.

- Steve Avigliano, 12/26/10