Maybe Freud's character in this movie could be extended and more complex. Instead, it was brief, but precise. Jung's character could go all the 360 degrees round. Again, it didn't. It was a round one, though, and very objective, according to the project of the film. The title and the promotion would also suggest a more intensely and focused plot in this two main characters, but it didn't, because Sabina Spielrein kind of ends up dominating the story. She turns out to be a key for practically all threads in this plot. At last, A Dangerous Method would presumably put Psychoanalysis at the center of its development, but Cronemberg's perspective went a little further and brought us this unrest feeling of existence, the "spleen" (Baudelaire), "la nausea" (Nietzche and Sartre), an atmosphere that pretty much reflects Cronemberg's main approaches. Eventually, then, it's a genuine Cronemberg's movie, and it's a very special one.
No wonder that we feel sometimes sharply uncomfortable, tedious and teased by a bit of anxiety or anguish, that's exactly what the movie is about. It comes from the doubts and discomfort with life and sickness, surrounding everyone, while telling the story of Psychoanalysis. Not even Freud is safe, in several aspects of his life, work, friends, patients and theory. They have so many limitations, they make mistakes, they are in the center of a storm, which is the human mind, the human soul, living in a world that is about to explode (WW1, totalitarianism, WW2...) and is still highly dominate by the figure of the father, an authority above all, in a very repressive, paternalistic and male society.
In that world, Sabina Spielrein could not be adjusted and healthy, but, before her 20's, she got extremely hysterical, if that is possible. She was brought to a psychiatric institution by her family, where Jung worked and was waiting for an opportunity to apply Freud's new method. Jung also wanted a chance to get to know him personally. That was when Psychoanalysis really began, by going beyond Freud's patients only, and through the discussions among the three of them, that are very brief but give a good idea of what did happen. The world, nevertheless, wasn't ready to accept or to collaborate very well with this new method.
The problematic relation between therapist and patient, the several forms of resistance, the transference that occurs and makes the patient take the therapist as an object of his hopes, interests, emotions, and all of this through the "innocence" of a talking cure. This gap between, first place, the real world and the special world that is recreated within the therapy, and secondly, between the individuality of therapist and the patient, between their real lives and the special relation that is produced during Psychoanalysis, that was the biggest challenge in the effort to heal neurosis. Still is.
Where is the masterpiece, then? It's in Sabina Spielrein. Vigorously played by the young Keira Knightley, way further than wherever she had gone before that. Sabina Spielrein is a profound tragic character, in a play that works entirely to show this, her unfitness to the world, but in a sense that it becomes our unfitness. Her tragic experience becomes universal, in this story. It's our tragedy, the tragedy of existence. Sabina couldn't be balanced, "normal", controllable, adjusted, tepid, but she had to be unquiet, sometimes disturbed.
It's not a movie that you should see unprepared, that you watch and quickly make up you mind as you leave the theater or turn off the DVD: liked it, didn't like it, and that's all. It needs time to understand a little bit more of what was shown in this very meticulous work. Watch it again, read some reviews, and soon you'll probably figure that out. You've just seen a true masterpiece of Cronenberg, Mortensen, Fassbender, Keira and everyone else that took part in it. You will smile at last.
No wonder that we feel sometimes sharply uncomfortable, tedious and teased by a bit of anxiety or anguish, that's exactly what the movie is about. It comes from the doubts and discomfort with life and sickness, surrounding everyone, while telling the story of Psychoanalysis. Not even Freud is safe, in several aspects of his life, work, friends, patients and theory. They have so many limitations, they make mistakes, they are in the center of a storm, which is the human mind, the human soul, living in a world that is about to explode (WW1, totalitarianism, WW2...) and is still highly dominate by the figure of the father, an authority above all, in a very repressive, paternalistic and male society.
In that world, Sabina Spielrein could not be adjusted and healthy, but, before her 20's, she got extremely hysterical, if that is possible. She was brought to a psychiatric institution by her family, where Jung worked and was waiting for an opportunity to apply Freud's new method. Jung also wanted a chance to get to know him personally. That was when Psychoanalysis really began, by going beyond Freud's patients only, and through the discussions among the three of them, that are very brief but give a good idea of what did happen. The world, nevertheless, wasn't ready to accept or to collaborate very well with this new method.
The problematic relation between therapist and patient, the several forms of resistance, the transference that occurs and makes the patient take the therapist as an object of his hopes, interests, emotions, and all of this through the "innocence" of a talking cure. This gap between, first place, the real world and the special world that is recreated within the therapy, and secondly, between the individuality of therapist and the patient, between their real lives and the special relation that is produced during Psychoanalysis, that was the biggest challenge in the effort to heal neurosis. Still is.
Where is the masterpiece, then? It's in Sabina Spielrein. Vigorously played by the young Keira Knightley, way further than wherever she had gone before that. Sabina Spielrein is a profound tragic character, in a play that works entirely to show this, her unfitness to the world, but in a sense that it becomes our unfitness. Her tragic experience becomes universal, in this story. It's our tragedy, the tragedy of existence. Sabina couldn't be balanced, "normal", controllable, adjusted, tepid, but she had to be unquiet, sometimes disturbed.
It's not a movie that you should see unprepared, that you watch and quickly make up you mind as you leave the theater or turn off the DVD: liked it, didn't like it, and that's all. It needs time to understand a little bit more of what was shown in this very meticulous work. Watch it again, read some reviews, and soon you'll probably figure that out. You've just seen a true masterpiece of Cronenberg, Mortensen, Fassbender, Keira and everyone else that took part in it. You will smile at last.