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A Dangerous Method


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🎙️ EPISODE 565: 09.29.22

Despite the many flaws here, this is extremely admirable as yet another fierce departure for Cronenberg, who this deep into his career is still so willing to take things in a different direction and try new things. That CGI boat and horrible green screens will forever stand out visually, but the real culprit here are some definite flow issues; like that computer-generated Atlantic Ocean, it's more than a bit choppy. This is a straight-up, decades-spanning biopic set in the early 1900s about the turbulent relationships between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), founder of analytical psychology, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), founder of the discipline of psychoanalysis, and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), initially a patient of Jung's and later a physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts.
The performances are, for the most part, fine. Although Knightley was flying off the handle at the beginning...


The best parts are when they're masterfully recreating actual events, like this sequence with Jung doing a test on his wife with new assistant Spierlrein aiding...


Also, this features the first of many examples of deep focus in A Dangerous Method, which I believe is the first time Cronenberg's deployed a split diopter to achieve the effect of both the foreground and background equally in focus...


And then there's his genuinely fascinating convo about the early days of psychoanalysis and the blowback which it received it...


The undercurrent of the lurking rise of Hitler/fascism is ever-present in this as well, but again: not nearly as flushed out as it could have been.

But the worst parts were easily the endless "letter reading" sequences, a cheap device you'd think someone like Cronenberg would be above. Deployed minimally, it's still hack, but there are scenes with so many back-and-forths...


I get it, that's how they mostly communicated, mostly living in different countries, and we have the receipts to confirm the accuracy of each exchange. But by god, it gets tiresome.

And I suppose now we should talk about the CGI and shitty green screens? Look. Cronenberg has earned leeway with his wonderful body of work to do whatever he wants. We still gotta dunk on this...


I'm trying to put myself into 2011 mode to figure out if this is exactly as bad as it looks. Of the top grossing movies that year, the only one I've seen is Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Obviously, comparing these two films is stupid. But as benchmark for what COULD be done vs. what we have here... The divide couldn't be greater. This looks like a high schooler did it on whatever animation software the computer lab had. I can't fathom it. It's obviously very funny (more than it is embarrassing imo), but it's one of those decisions I'll never be able to understand. Why was this signed off on? This whole crossing the Atlantic sequence (which leads to a grand total of ZERO shots taking place in actual America) could've been filmed without these fake exteriors and the green-screened in Statue of Liberty. Just a bizarre choice!

Also, I've so often praised D.C. for his economical approach to filmmaking (and rightfully so). He has a superb ability to capture the essence of a story in around 100 minutes or less, and his most recent movies up until this point have been the best example of that. But here het gets too tight with the run-time. This is a television show's worth of content reduced to the requisite hour and thirty-seven minutes. I definitely didn't hate this, but it's easily his most slight and least essential work to date (outside of the early films and you know what).

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 19th 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚐 – 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑/𝚛𝚎𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚏 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝙲𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚎𝚛𝚐'𝚜 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚖𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢. 𝙲𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎...

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 564 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 566A ⫸

A Dangerous Method is a 2011 historical drama film directed by David Cronenberg. The film stars Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Gadon, and Vincent Cassel. Its screenplay was adapted by writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, which was based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein. It was released on September 9, 2011.

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