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SDFF 34 - A Dangerous Method

Justin here with a review of the new David Cronenberg movie, A Dangerous Method, which I saw at this year’s Starz Denver Film Festival.

My favorite love song of all time is “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” by the Talking Heads. I’m pretty sure that this is the only love song that the band wrote. As love songs go, it’s pretty unconventional; nowhere is the word “love” mentioned. Most love songs are about the euphoric burst of emotion at the beginning of a relationship. “This Must Be the Place” is more about safe places, finding someone and somewhere that gives a sense of home while the rest of the world is a weird alienating place. In other words, it’s a love song by the Talking Heads.

The reason I bring it up, is because I think that A Dangerous Method is the same thing for David Cronenberg. It’s a surprisingly nice and life-affirming love movie… from the director of Videodrome and Dead Ringers.

A Dangerous Method centers around famed psychologist C. G. Jung as convincingly played by Michael Fassbender. The movie chronicles Jung’s pioneering work in the field on analytical psychology with the help of Sigmund Freud, as played by Cronenberg regular Viggo Mortensen. Along the way, Jung takes in a beautiful but extremely troubled patient, Sabina Spielrein played by Keira Knightley. Jung sets her on the road to rehabilitation and then begins having an affair with her.

Cronenberg explores a variety of different kinds of relationships in the movie, from the mostly physical relationship between Jung and Spielrein to the emotional relationship between Jung and Freud.

A Dangerous Method isn’t as shocking as most other Cronenberg movies. There are some relatively light BDSM scenes, however, I thought that the sex scenes from Cronenberg’s last two movies, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises were far more graphic. The BDSM scenes came off as being relatively sex positive. Far more so than the twist at the end of M. Butterfly, the only other Cronenberg movie that may qualify as a love story.

The most remarkable part of A Dangerous Method to me was that the ending offered a truly transformative experience in terms of thematically refocusing the movie and bringing with it a perspective that I hadn’t considered. I found the movie to be very intellectually stimulating, and happily touched on a lot of themes that I have been fascinated with over the last several months, psychoanalysis, creation arising from destruction, dread, doom, and relationships in general. But my interest blinded me to Cronenberg’s underlying thesis on love. Much is made in the movie about psychology bringing modern man into a post-morality culture and the difference between physical and emotional love.

I think that A Dangerous Method is being marketed wrong. The trailer I saw lead me to believe that the movie would be something like the psychological equivalent of Dead Ringers. I’m not at all disappointed with the movie I got though. But it’s a movie that doesn’t really fit into Cronenberg’s wider body of work. People who were fans of his recent gangster movies will find that there is practically no physical violence or crime in this one. Fans of his S/F work like Videodrome and The Fly will find no far out special effects. People who liked those movies for their subtext will love A Dangerous Method though.

I try to watch Cronenberg movies with his overarching theme of The New Flesh in mind. After my first watch, I’m not really sure how that ties into A Dangerous Method. Could the transformative element being added to the world be psychoanalysis itself? Or could it be something more shocking like love itself? Recommended.