Movie Summary of A Dangerous Method by Michael The Moviegoer
A DANGEROUS METHOD = *
“Psychobabble On And On”
The usually reliable David Cronenberg has delivered an awkward period piece (early 1900s) set in Zurich and Vienna. It’s a stagey adaptation of a stage play featuring the three main characters Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein all talking endlessly about psychoanalysis. Beware of a deceptive marketing campaign that creatively makes this snoozer look like a thriller.
Christopher Hampton’s too-talkey screenplay is adapted from the play “The Talking Cure”, a play about talking. Viggo Mortensen plays Freud, Jung is played by Michael Fassbender, and Spielrein is way over-played by a miscast over-the-top Keira Knightley.
The material is supposedly true. It is well documented that these individuals all interacted a century ago. Spielrein was first a patient of Jung’s, but later became well known and respected as one of the world’s first women psychoanalysts. “A Dangerous Method” suggests the patient and the doctor had a sexual affair, but those scenes are presented clumsily and are about as erotic as an income tax seminar.
If this film ever manages to find any kind of audience, Knightley’s performance is one that will be ridiculed for years to come. During this annual awards-predicting season, I must remark that Keira Knightley deserves to win the famous Razzie award for her jawdroppingly bad acting which infects this entire film from scene one.
Title cards at the end of the film inform us that Sabina Spielrein was executed by Nazis in 1942. Pardon me for being insensitive, but if Cronenberg had actually shown us this scene, with Knightley getting shot in the head, I would have stood up and cheered!
DVD Double Feature:
I need to cut Keira Knightley some slack here. I have always loved this adorable actress. It’s very possible the creative choices that resulted in this awful performance were not her fault, but that of the director. In any case, the Oscar-nominated Knightley has given several powerful performances in the past, most notably earlier this year in “Last Night”. In this thoughtful drama Knightly plays a married woman trying to resist the temptations of her ex-lover.
Michael The Moviegoer
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What a fool you must be to write this. “Insensitive” is not the right word, but just keep enjoying yourself with statements like this. Guess you feel “good” about it in some way.