| A Dangerous Method | |
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| Directed by | David Cronenberg |
| Screenplay by | Christopher Hampton |
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| Produced by | Jeremy Thomas |
| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Peter Suschitzky |
| Edited by | Ronald Sanders |
| Music by | Howard Shore |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $14 million[1] |
| Box office | $30 million[2] |
A Dangerous Method is a 2011historical drama film directed byDavid Cronenberg. The film starsKeira Knightley,Viggo Mortensen,Michael Fassbender,Sarah Gadon, andVincent Cassel. Its screenplay was adapted by writerChristopher Hampton from his 2002 stage playThe Talking Cure, which was based on the 1993 non-fiction book byJohn Kerr,A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein.
Set in the period from 1902 to the eve ofWorld War I,A Dangerous Method follows the turbulent relationships betweenCarl Jung, founder ofanalytical psychology,Sigmund Freud, founder of the discipline ofpsychoanalysis, andSabina Spielrein, initially Jung's patient and later a physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts.[3]
A co-production between British, Canadian, and German production companies, the film marks the third consecutive collaboration between Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (afterA History of Violence andEastern Promises). This is also the third Cronenberg film made with British film producerJeremy Thomas, after they collaborated on theWilliam Burroughs adaptationNaked Lunch and theJ. G. Ballard adaptationCrash. Filming took place between May and July 2010 inCologne on a soundstage, with exterior shots filmed inVienna.
A Dangerous Method premiered at the68th Venice Film Festival and was also featured at the2011 Toronto International Film Festival.[4][5] The film was theatrically released in Germany on 10 November 2011 byUniversal Pictures International, in Canada on 13 January 2012 byEntertainment One and in the United Kingdom on 10 February 2012 byLionsgate. The film grossed $24 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, many praising the performances of Mortensen and Fassbender and Cronenberg's direction. It appeared on several critics' year-end lists. At the69th Golden Globe Awards, Mortensen was nominated for theBest Supporting Actor – Motion Picture.
In August 1904,Sabina Spielrein arrives at theBurghölzli, the pre-eminent psychiatric hospital inZürich, suffering fromhysteria and begins a new course of treatment with the young Swiss doctorCarl Jung. He usesword association anddream interpretation as part of his approach to psychoanalysis and finds that Spielrein's condition was triggered by the humiliation and sexual arousal she felt as a child when her father spanked her naked.
Jung and chief of medicineEugen Bleuler recognize Spielrein's intelligence and energy and allow her to assist them in their experiments. She measures the physical reactions of subjects during word association, to provideempirical data as a scientific basis for psychoanalysis. She soon learns that much of this new science is founded on the doctors' observations of themselves, each other, and their families, not just their patients. The doctors, Jung and Freud, correspond at length before they meet, and begin sharing their dreams and analysing each other, and Freud himself soon adopts Jung as his heir and agent.
Jung finds in Spielrein a kindred spirit, and their attraction deepens due totransference. Jung resists the idea of cheating on his wife,Emma, and breaking thetaboo of sex with a patient, but his resolve is weakened by the wild and unrepentant confidences of his new patientOtto Gross, a brilliant, philandering, unstable psychoanalyst. Gross decries monogamy in general and suggests that resistance to transference is symptomatic of the repression of normal, healthy sexual impulses, exhorting Jung to indulge himself with abandon.
Jung finally begins an affair with Spielrein, including rudimentarybondage and spanking. Things become even more tangled as he becomes her advisor to her dissertation; he publishes not only his studies of her as a patient but eventually her treatise as well. Spielrein wants to conceive a child with Jung, but he refuses. After he attempts to confine their relationship again to doctor and patient, she appeals to Freud for his professional help, and forces Jung to tell Freud the truth about their relationship, reminding him that she could have publicly damaged him but did not want to.
Jung and Freud travel to America. However, cracks appear in their friendship as they begin to disagree more frequently on matters of psychoanalysis. Jung and Spielrein meet to work on her dissertation in Switzerland and begin their sexual relationship once more. However, after Jung refuses to leave his wife for her, Spielrein decides to go to Vienna. She meets Freud and says that although she sides with him, she believes he and Jung need to reconcile for psychoanalysis to continue to develop.
Following Freud's collapse at an academic conference, he and Jung continue correspondence via letters. They decide to end their relationship after increasing hostilities and accusations regarding the differences in their conceptualisation of psychoanalysis. Spielrein marries a Russian doctor and, while pregnant, visits Jung and his wife. They discuss psychoanalysis and Jung's new mistress. Jung confides that his love for Spielrein made him a better person.
The film's footnote reveals the eventual fates of the four analysts. Gross starved to death in Berlin in 1920. Freud died of cancer in London in 1939 after being driven out of Vienna by theNazis. Spielrein trained several analysts in theSoviet Union before she and her two daughters were shot by the Nazis in 1942. Jung emerged from anervous breakdown to become the world's leading psychologist before dying in 1961.[6]
Hampton's earliest version of the screenplay, dating back to the 1990s, was written forJulia Roberts in the role of Sabina Spielrein, but the film was never realized. Hampton re-wrote the screenplay for the stage before producerJeremy Thomas acquired the rights for both the earlier script and the stage version.[7]
The film was produced by Britain'sRecorded Picture Company, with Germany's Lago Film and Canada's Prospero Film acting as co-producers.[8] Additional funding was provided by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MFG Baden-Württemberg, Filmstiftung NRW, theGerman Federal Film Board [de] and Film Fund, Ontario Media Development Corp and Millbrook Pictures.[9]
Christoph Waltz was initially cast as Sigmund Freud, but was replaced byViggo Mortensen due to a scheduling conflict.[10]Christian Bale had been in talks to play Carl Jung, but he too had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts.[11]
The filming began on 26 May and ended on 24 July 2010.[9] Exteriors were shot in Vienna and interiors were filmed on a soundstage in Cologne (MMC Studios Köln), Germany. Viennese locations included theCafé Sperl,Berggasse 19, and theSchloss Belvedere.Lake Constance (Bodensee) stood in for Lake Zurich.[12]
A noted feature of the film is the extensive use in the musical score ofleitmotifs from Wagner's thirdRing operaSiegfried, mostly in piano transcription. The composerHoward Shore has said that the structure of the film is based on the structure of theSiegfried opera.[13]
Universal Pictures released the film in German-speaking territories, Spain and South Africa, whileLionsgate took rights to the United Kingdom[14] andSony Pictures Classics distributed the film in the United States.[15] The film debuted at theVenice Film Festival in Italy on 2 September 2011.
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 78% of 191 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "A provocative historical fiction about the early days of psychoanalysis,A Dangerous Method is buoyed by terrific performances by Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen."[16]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[17]
Louise Keller reports fromUrban Cinephile, "The best scenes are those between Mortensen and Fassbender...the tension between the two men mounts as their views conflict: Freud insists that sex is an underlying factor in every neurosis while Jung, interested in spiritualism and the occult, is disappointed by what he considers to be Freud's 'rigid pragmatism.'"[18]
Andrew O'Hehir ofSalon opines that on the one hand Freud's "single-minded focus onsexual repression as the source of neurosis led to the creation of psychiatry as a legitimate medical and scientific field—one that was often resistant to change and dominated by authoritarian father figures." On the other hand, Sabina's effect on Jung, and "the discoveries they had made together, both in the office and the bedroom," including the potential in "a creative fusion of opposites—doctor and patient, man and woman, dark and light, Jew and Aryan," led to a falling out between the two men "over a variety of issues, most notably the scientific limits of psychiatric inquiry."[19]
In contrast,Steven Rea ofThe Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that, despite the film's exploration of "the way our subconscious works, the way we repress, and suppress, natural urges—the constant battle between the rational and the instinctive, the civilized and the wild", the film "feels distant, and clinical, in ways you wished it did not."[20] In an interview withThe Daily Beast's Marlow Stern, Cronenberg himself is quoted as saying that the love scenes between Jung and Spielrein were "quite clinical. These were people who, even when they were having sex, they were observing themselves having sex because they were so interested in their reactions to things."[11]
The film was listed at number 5 onFilm Comment magazine's Best Films of 2011 list.[21]
A Dangerous Method was listed on many critics' 2011 top ten lists.[22]
| Year | Award | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
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| 2011 | National Board of Review Awards[23] | Spotlight Award | Michael Fassbender(Also forShame,Jane Eyre, andX-Men: First Class) | Won |
| Satellite Awards | Actor in a Supporting Role | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
| Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards | Best Actor | Michael Fassbender(Also forShame,Jane Eyre, andX-Men: First Class) | Won | |
| 2012 | Golden Globe Awards[24] | Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated |
| London Critics' Circle Film Awards[25] | British Actor of the Year | Michael Fassbender(Also forShame) | Won | |
| Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards[26] | Actor of the Year | Michael Fassbender(Also forShame,Jane Eyre, andX-Men: First Class) | Nominated | |
| Genie Awards[27] | Best Motion Picture | Martin Katz, Marco Mehlitz, Jeremy Thomas | Nominated | |
| Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design | James Mcateer | Won | ||
| Best Actor | Michael Fassbender | Nominated | ||
| Best Supporting Actor | Viggo Mortensen | Won | ||
| Best Costume Design | Denise Cronenberg | Nominated | ||
| Best Direction | David Cronenberg | Nominated | ||
| Best Editing | Ronald Sanders, C.C.E. A.C.E. | Nominated | ||
| Achievement in Music – Original Score | Howard Shore | Won | ||
| Best Sound | Orest Sushko, Christian Cooke | Won | ||
| Best Sound Editing | Wayne Griffin, Rob Bertola, Tony Currie, Andy Malcolm, Michael O'Farrell | Won | ||
| Best Visual Effects | Jason Edwardh, Oliver Hearsey, Jim Price, Milan Schere, Wojciech Zielinski | Nominated | ||
| Sant Jordi Award | Best Foreign Actor | Michael Fassbender(Also forJane Eyre andX-Men: First Class) | Won | |
| Directors Guild of Canada Awards[28] | Best Direction | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Best Feature Film | Won | |||
| Best Production Design – Feature Film | James McAteer | Won | ||
| Best Picture Editing – Feature Film | Ron Sanders | Won | ||
| Best Sound Editing | Rob Bertola, Tony Currie, Alastair Gray, Michael O'Farrell, Gren-Erich Zwicker | Won |
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