A DANGEROUS METHOD
5 out of 5 stars

“do you think they know we’re on our way, bringing them the plague?” – sigmund freud to carl jung (on a ship to NYC)

DAVID CRONENBERG (director of eastern promises, a history of violence) does it AGAIN!!! EXCELLENT movie about the founding fathers of analytical psychology! a wonderful cast and wonderful acting! if you’re interested in psychology, this is the movie for you. ;)

this one starts with a batshit crazy russian jewish woman named sabina speilrein (a WONDERFUL keira knightley) arriving via horse carriage to the burghölzli, a psychiatric hospital in zurich, switzerland with a typical case of hysteria. (AKA unmanageable emotional excesses accord. to wikipedia) she’s completely gone off the deep end, and carl jung (michael fassbender, how i love u!) decides to treat her using the “talking cure”, which is dream interpretation and word association. this is part of his approach to sigmund freud (viggo mortensen)’s radical new science, psychoanalysis. they start meeting and discussing sabina’s childhood and such, and jung finds out that sabina’s condition is triggered by humiliation and sexual arrousal from when her dad used to spank her nekked as a young child. (she’s a cronic masturbator, and even jung hitting her coat sets her off...LOL) 2 years pass, and jung decides to finally meet with the almighty freud and discuss his work with him. by then, sabina is all better, and wants to become a psychologist herself. problems start to form when sabina and jung enter into an affair (jung is married BTW), and freud wants jung to take the helm of the psychoanalysis movement. (although jung disagrees with many freudian theories) my favorite line is when jung states,”why must freud revolve everything around sexuality?” gawd, what a perv... :P

this was a very interesting look at how one woman influenced the radical principles of two founding fathers of analytical psychology, and how these two men (freud and jung) influenced each other, even though they disagreed with one another... this script was very well written and i actually would suggest watching with subtitles, so you don’t miss the meat of their discussions. fassbender EXCELS in the role of conflicted carl jung, viggo EXCELS in the role of freud...even down to smoking his danish grandfather’s cigars as part of his “method”, and keira EXCELS as sabina...down to the russian accent, the hysteria, the sex, everything. talk about a movie that gets into your mind and stays there... ;)