Inside A Dangerous Method: The Eternal Affair of Doctors vs. Patients

First of all, If I were Constantin Stanislavski - [the work on whose Acting Method/System won me an acceptance to apply with the Harvard University in 1999] - I would have left the movie theatre on the first scene...

One cannot portray a psychologically ill person by simply freezing in spasms and moving a jaw in all the possible directions. It's not enough to roll one's eyes and start mimicking an ill person. This is exactly what Keira Knightley's character - Sabina Spielrein - did and what almost drove me out of the theatre. I can accept a bad acting, but only in certain movies I usually watch once in a while for the sake of being mindlessly entertained. But Knightley should have known better - not sure why the director didn't notice such a bad acting? She should have studied an ill person - just as Dustin Hoffman did for his part in Rain Man, for which he spent almost a year at a special clinic. She should have spent at least a day or two at a psychiatric clinic (and/or mental institution) - [and if she did, then her acting stretch capabilities are just not good enough, period] - and not just assume she could do it... She ran around, laughed like a stereotypically 'crazy' person and did other disgusting things that just didn't help her part. (Also, could someone feed Keira Knightley, please, she looks like a 'concentration camp' imprisoner. Not a very good image for the teenage girls - her fans - out there...)

Anyway...

A good thing is that a much-awaited film A Dangerous Method has finally arrived to the states.
After all the ongoing positive reviews, my personal expectation and eagerness to see the film has been built up, especially because I've been always fascinated with Sigmund Freud's works. Last May, as part of the Cannes Film Festival's program, the film received very good reviews. The film caused some stir. The actors received a 'loud applause', and the film became a sought-after 'commodity' by the rest of the foreign film lovers around the world. It's been 'marketed' as a rather sexually disturbing and intellectually stimulating film, which did trigger the 'taste buds'  of the public and raised their expectations. However, once again, I found that a one person's opinion is just a one person's opinion and it might be completely the opposite from mine. And that's exactly what happened with A Dangerous Method...

I can't say I'm a film expert, but I did study film with a Frances Ford Coppola's student back in the days, and I did work on films and for a film producer in Hollywood. I've been quite a bit around the film industry since my teenage years, so I can at least tell a difference between a 'believable' film and an 'over-played, over-imagined, and over-top' film. A Dangerous Mind falls in the category of a film, which subject matter hasn't been much filmed and explored in the cinematography - the human's psychology and the science of psychoanalysis - from the time of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), where the cast - I must say - BRILLIANTLY portrayed the mentally ill people. Since then - not many actors and film directors could do such a superb job with the subject matter. Thus, the topic of the film alone fascinated and attracted the film viewers and critics - to much of disappointment, though.

Well, I don't want to say there is no drama. The drama is there and it's multi-faced. There's the conflict between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), who at the start of the 20th century pioneered the 'talking cure', the kind of talk therapy that allows a patient to 'find' him/herself and apply to the best of his/her abilities. However, while Jung is much more involved in exploring the human nature, most specifically - the human sexuality, believing that all patients are different and they should be not be just treated, but rather encouraged to find a core of their problems and make them as 'normal' as possible by bringing out their talents. So, from a very ill and sexually frustrated/disturbed patient - Sabina Spielrein - she was encouraged to go back to the medical school and become a psychologist herself! Yes, imagine that - a very mentally disturbed S&M person has not only finished the school and become a doctor (she went on to become one of the first female psychoanalysts), she actually went off to contribute to a few books and treating ill children. So, next time you go to your shrink, he/she might be as 'disturbed' as you are...That's why I never go to shrinks, but that's not the point.

David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method fails to both intellectually stimulate, educate and/or entertain a public. It's slow. It reveals nothing new - especially for those who have read at least one study/book by Freud, and go off the course of actually showing more of their 'method', achievements and internal drama of the characters. In addition, throughout the movie, we see that doctors are as disturbed and f*cked up as their own patients. Moreover, while I've been very respectful of Freud's works, this film - if to believe it - shows what a 'sissy' he was, how afraid he was to explore further and deeper and how, in many ways, he was too pragmatic and ignorant of new discoveries and inventions. The film shows him as a rather boring and tired man, who even tries to discourage his colleague Jung from exploring the human sexuality and nature further, because of his own theories being already under attack because of his focus on sexual guilt as a source of psychological distress.

If it wasn't for the occasional spanking sessions between Dr. Jung and patient Sabina Spielrein, I would have snoozed away in the very beginning of the movie. I think the only rather interesting statement I took a note of was Freud's saying to Jung that "World is full of people. There are a lot of people, and we should take them as they are and not try to cure them". If this is what Freud actually did once say in his life, then why would I ever fall in love with his other statement: "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?” Brilliantly said once...

Watch a trailer here: