Shrinks.  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t truly reshape their consciousness for a more pleasing outcome without taking into consideration the many ways that could cause irreparable harm to the psyche.  Best to just watch A Dangerous Method, the fascinating story of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and their patient/fellow psychoanalyst-to-be Sabina Spielrein.  After watching, you can tell me how that made you feel.  It made me feel fantastic.

Everybody knows who Sigmund Freud is.  The father of psychoanalysis, he’s the one who seems to be able to break everything down into something sexual and is now more of a sly joke than scientist to most folks.  “Sometimes a banana is just a banana, Anna.”  Carl Jung is well known, but not to the point of being a touchstone like Freud.  Jung just isn’t in everyone’s collective unconscious yet…but since he’s the one that coined that term (and he’s more respected nowadays), he should be.  Freud and Jung had a longstanding professional camaraderie that blossomed into friendship, only to crash and burn when their ideologies clashed.  A Dangerous Method adds Spielrein, a gorgeous but dangerously neurotic woman who becomes a patient of Jung’s.  In this movie, her arrival is the catalyst that shifts Jung’s ideas, ultimately causing the rift between Jung and Freud.  In director David Cronenberg’s hands it’s a mesmerizing look at the humanity behind these great minds.  Performances by Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley make this film one to watch when they announce the Oscar noms.

What Cronenberg can do better than anyone else in the business is peel away the layers and get right down into the heart of the matter.  Be it Videodrome, Crash or A History of Violence, Cronenberg wades in and delivers unflinching looks at the human condition.  Some of his films may not be for everyone (I still get creeped out from the ending of The Brood) but you can’t deny their power.  A Dangerous Method isn’t going to hold a New Flesh gun to your head and demand your participation, but this film doesn’t gloss over the real nitty-gritty of Freud’s theories.  Which is a nice way to say that you’re gonna see Knightley get paddled.  I’ll pause for a bit so some of you can run to Amazon and place your advance order for the DVD.  Back?  Good.

The story here starts when Sabina Spielrein arrives at Jung’s hospital.  She’s restrained by a group of orderlies, and Knightley’s foaming at the mouth hysterics are realistic, never once straying into the overblown.  When Jung first sees her, she’s a heartbreaking mess of troubles, but as she gets better we can see the intellect and the pain behind her eyes.  Transference, reverse-transference…whatever; the two end up as lovers.  After the requisite White Man Guilt Trip, Jung breaks it off.  He is a married man, after all.  (Plus, his wife is the one with the money, so he probably shouldn’t be running around.  Just saying.)  Sabina writes to Freud, and soon she’s speaking to Papa Siggy.  Meanwhile, Jung and Freud are warring over conflicts between their respective psychoanalytic beliefs, and the rift is unrepairable.

Though all the actors here give outstanding performances, Vincent Cassel (Black Swan) deserves special mention, mostly because his work here has been pushed aside with the award-winning performances by Fassbender and Mortensen.  Cassel plays Otto Gross, a proto-hippie free love beatnik psychoanalyst that comes to Jung’s hospital so Jung can “keep an eye on him”.  Gross is gleefully hedonistic, and the scenes where Gross and Jung discuss their differences (Gross: sensualist, Jung: uptight) are thoroughly compelling.
As for the leads, all three deliver jaw-dropping performances that are already garnering award recognition.  Fassbender has a fastidious, buttoned-up sexuality here, and I’ve gotta say he’s hotter here in tweed than he ever is while butt nekkid in Shame.  Though many will argue that Shame was Fassbender’s best work, I found this a much more fascinating, and thereby more satisfying, performance.  Mortensen’s Freud is between man and professor/myth, straddling the line between the two.  Mortensen has worked with Cronenberg before (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises), and Viggo’s ability to thoroughly inhabit a character is definitely here in spades.  The interplay between these two onscreen is electric; that not only works well in this story of the beginnings of psychoanalytic theory, but it sure doesn’t hurt the eyes while you watch.  Knightley’s no-holds-barred performance early on blossoms into a more subdued look at a woman who is struggling with love and her place in the world, and it’s a brilliant performance.

This is another one of those movies you could watch on mute if you wanted to; the shots of Austria and Germany are as gorgeous as the lead actors, and the cinematography is crisp and clear.  The only problem is that I now want to dress in the all-white outfits Sabina wears.  And that’s a problem because I’d get ‘em dirty in 5 minutes flat.  Ah, but for those 4 minutes?  Life would be beautiful.

At the end of A Dangerous Method there’s a written prologue that gives viewers information on where these characters went on from there.  It’s heartbreaking to know that Sabina, with her groundbreaking views on sexual/cognitive development, never got the chance to fully flesh out her theories.  As a Jewish intellectual in Russia during World War II, she was murdered by Nazis.  Though I’d love to see that story told, A Dangerous Method can stand as not only a supremely fine film, but as a tribute to a fascinating woman.