A Dangerous Method

Psychoanalysis. It is about finding ghosts and leaving them hanging in the sight of all. Soon, however, psychoanalysis turns into a proposal that is irreverent rather than contradictory and the ghosts that were put in the light, all of a sudden, want to fly away. 

Two methods for understanding the human psyche developed in two heads that revolutionized the way man looked and understood himself. The intellectual duel between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud is rendered here from a realistic perspective and becomes an intense drama, exciting for those interested in the subject. One, Freud, wants to find ghosts. The other, Jung, wants to tell them where they have to fly.

This clash is the core of a movie that apparently does not belong to David Cronenberg, addicted to more vicious realities and extravagant universes. Yet, sexual issues, the secretions of the characters, scandalous entanglements, the light left by the psychoanalytic big-bang; it is all placed in the frame by a Cronenberg who understands perfectly the historical time and geographical location where all this happened.

Supported in the great script by Christopher Hampton's expertise in exploring self-destructive impulses that Freud himself would describe as dark, David Cronenberg delivers a highly visually polished speech, a composition of light full frames close to the classic, pristine environments full of lights. 

He does it because that way, the dark and violent impulses of his characters (his specialty) will be highlighted, will be felt most dangerous and perhaps out of tune. The societies and countries in which psychoanalysis was born in the early twentieth century were like this and Cronenberg plays with that double morality of the time, for those who struggled to have a superior civilization and at the same time committed as many "sins" as revolutionary ideas they could have thought of.

Behind this, perhaps the best thing of the film is a love story amid sickly brilliant minds (minds that really existed, the specialty of screenwriter Hampton); a drama that involves perverse sexual fetishes and tastes; the emergence of immortal father Otto Gross's counterculture, anarchist and trigger-perhaps- of the final clash between Freud and Jung (a touch of elegance that darkens the tone but not the frame); the psychoanalysts who sees in the patients' descriptions the same shadows that haunt him; the projection of the doctor in the ghosts of the patients; a violent exploration of the human being; the basics of what is human.

A detailed and sharp direction of actors (Keira Knightley precise and outstanding, Michael Fassbender icily omnipresent, Viggo Mortensen with an eyed dragon sight), with provocative visual messages (a huge game in which Cronenberg makes everyone to use a "uniform" but differentiate them all with small details such as ties or different hats) drives all the nuances of  the characters, all surrounding the exploration of these. Everything is an exploration of the human and us, remember, we are and always will be human beings. A dangerous method, no doubt.

Director: David Cronenberg

Writers: Christopher Hampton (screenplay), John Kerr (book)

Stars: Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen