A Dangerous Method

David Cronenberg is a director who enjoys pushing envelopes, be it with the horror genre where he got his reputation some thirty years ago with visceral and often sly chillers, and, more recently, with exercises in contemporary noir - the crime melodramas "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises." But with "A Dangerous Method" he does something unexpected - morphs into Merchant/Ivory before our very eyes. What proves to be the most provocative thing about this film is its title.

Perhaps screenwriter Christopher Hampton should have stayed with the title of the play upon which he based his script: "The Talking Cure" is a more apt description of this long-winded look into the thorny relationship between two of psychology's biggest names - Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). (For the record Hampton based his play on a 1994 book "A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein," a scholarly work that redefined the historical significance of both Freud and Jung.)

The film begins promisingly, even a bit dangerously: a clearly unstable young woman, named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), is admitted into a Zurich clinic where the 29-year old Jung is employed. She refuses to eat, is hostile and becomes unhinged when her doctor smacks her coat to remove dirt from it after it falls to the ground. (This proves to be pivotal in understanding her psychosis.) Being brought to the clinic is the last resort for the woman, a Russian Jew and something of an embarrassment to her aristocratic family. Played with physical exactitude (every tick in full close-up), Knightley ignites the early portions of the film as Jung attempts to treat her with his Talking Cure, a method of treatment derived from Freud involving conversing with the patient.

Surprisingly it works. Jung unlocks the key to Spielrein's illness - a psychosexual relationship with her father that manifests in her masochistic tendencies. Within years, (the film spans from 1904 to 1918) Spielrein is attending medical school with hopes to follow in Jung's footsteps as a therapist. She also lures the solidly bourgeoisie doctor into a sexual relationship. At first, he's reluctant, but egged-on by a patient he's treating - a freethinking Freud disciple named Otto Gross (a fine Vincent Cassell) - it isn't long before he's slapping her bottom. This being Cronenberg these sequences would disrupt the film's placid surface. No such luck. They are as reserved as the rest of the film and border of self-parody in the cool manner they are enacted.

It was strange to see this film the within weeks of Ken Russell's passing - imagine what he would have done with that scene. A fantasy sequence a la Busby Berkeley by way of the Marquis De Sade? Cronenberg is less interested in putting a personal stamp on Hampton's script than simply illustrating it cinematically. Being based on a play, there's a lot of talk, and much of it feels stagey. Jung and Freud spar with their differing methods and temperaments, and Jung deals with his particular demons; but the result is as dispassionate as the good doctor's demeanor. When in the final reel, Spielrein leaves him, Jung is said to be devastated; but there was so little to respond to emotionally that the moment (and film) lacks resonance.

This is unfortunate since Knightley is quite good once she calms down after the fevered opening sequences. It takes a brave actress to give herself as physically as Knightley does in the early sections, when her over-the-top behavior could easily be ridiculed. Yet what she does amazingly well is show her character's transition into more socially accepted behavior. Though calmed, there's always something lurking beneath the surface that can erupt - Knightley is on edge, and she brings a much-needed tension to this talkfest. Her presence is sorely missed when she's off-screen. Fassbender is quite good at expressing Jung's conflicted nature - he's a Freudian case study in action; but remains remote throughout, and without that connection, he remains the cipher at the center of the film. Fassbender's cool is what also propels his performance in "Shame," but there the tension felt palpable; here it is oblique. Mortensen appears to be having fun as Freud, playing him like an avuncular professor amused and then angered by his best student. But the triangular relationship feels forced, as if Hampton needed to place Knightley between these two giants for greater dramatic effect, and limits the forcefulness of the film's second half in which Spielrein gravitates towards Freud.

That said, Cronenberg, working with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, gives the film a handsome look that recreates the film's upper-class milieu with gorgeous detail. Still the sunniness seems at odds with the film's darker themes, which are only hinted at. Perhaps there is danger in the talk, but it feels mitigated by the film's tasteful surface. When Hampton worked with Stephen Frears on "Dangerous Liaisons," the psychological dimensions he brought his characters burst onto the film's surface. It felt alive with drama and incident; ironically, here is a story that abounds in psychological dimensions, too bad it feels like an illustrated lecture. "A Dangerous Method" is well-intended, but missing that creative spark that so makes Cronenberg such a compelling director. "A Dangerous Method" proves to be very much a "so what"-kind-of movie: smartly written, impeccably packaged, well-acted and inexplicably dull.