A Dangerous Method: Bringing Up Jung
by Mark Asch
A Dangerous Method
Directed by David Cronenberg
The film begins with disruption, with hysteric Sabina’s arrival at Jung’s Swiss clinic—Knightley’s forced howling laughter and squintingly studied Russian accent seem as alarmingly contorted as her neurosis-gnarled musculature. Sabina’s soon unrepressed taste for S&M challenges mystic purist Jung; with Shame, opening a week later, A Dangerous Method makes a fortuitous and unique double bill spotlighting Michael Fassbender’s grimacing sexual exertions, but though my colleague Henry Stewart points to Shame as a Catholic-guilt allegory, it’s while whipping Knightley here that Fassbender most looks like he’s flagellating himself. Cronenberg sometimes shoots these scenes in a mirror, reinforcing Sabina’s thesis about sex in conflict with ego—the film generally takes her side against the cigars-and-brandy cabal. Still, it’s Mortensen who walks away with it, nodding or grunting meaningfully as acolyte Jung compares him to Galileo or resists his one-upsmanship, his every gesture a miracle of sanguine efficiency.
Opens November 23
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