Total Film
The talky emphasis may alienate, but Cronenberg’s psychoanalysis session offers wry writing, elegant direction and fine leads.
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A Dangerous Method
David Cronenberg (A History of Violence) directs this true drama based on the turbulent love triangle that developed between two towering intellectuals of our age - Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and protege Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) - and a troubled patient (Kiera Knightley).
Based on the play The Talking Cure by Christopher Hampton, which was based on the nonfiction novel A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr.
Best Supporting Actor Nominee (Viggo Mortensen) 2012 Golden Globes
2011Rating: MA15+, for sexual content and brief language100 minsCanada, Germany, UK, Switzerland
DramaTrue Story & BiographyHistorical
- Director:
- David Cronenberg ('The Fly', 'Videodrome', 'Crash', 'eXistenZ', 'Eastern Promises', 'A History of Violence')
- Writer:
- Christopher Hampton
- Cast:
- Viggo MortensenMichael FassbenderKeira KnightleyVincent CasselSarah Gadon
A Dangerous Method / Reviews
Time Out
The most compelling scenes are those between Mortensen and Fassbender, while Knightley gives a fair performance but lumbers herself with a distracting accent, and her gurning in the early scenes may be too much for some to bear.
Full reviewThe New York Times
Full of ideas about sexuality - some quite provocative, even a century after their first articulation - but it also recognizes and communicates the erotic power of ideas.
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San Francisco Chronicle
Instead we get Knightley, who juts her chin, quakes, shakes and bugs her eyes, but nothing about her pain calls out to us, because nothing in it seems real.
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Rolling Stone
The actors give it their all, especially Knightley, whose jaw- jutting, heavily accented and unfairly criticized portrayal gives the film its fighting spirit.
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Roger Ebert
Using a dialogue-heavy approach that's unusual for Cronenberg, his film is skilled at the way it weaves theory with the inner lives of its characters. We are learning, yet never feel we're being taught.
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IndieWire
In the movie's final shot, Jung's confidence crumbles and he looks supremely troubled, still uncertain of a world he once believed could be explained with textual prowess. Better than any analysis, his expression sums up the dangerous method at the heart of every Cronenberg movie.
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Hollywood Reporter
Precise, lucid and thrillingly disciplined, this story of boundary-testing in the early days of psychoanalysis is brought to vivid life by the outstanding lead performances of Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender.
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Empire Magazine
Despite a top-notch cast performing well, and bravely in the case of Knightley, this is an austere, somewhat repressed movie. It never really gets under the skin in the way Cronenberg does at his best.
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A.V. Club
Spielrein's name is less familiar than the others, but the film suggests she deserves to be more than a footnote in the history of psychoanalysis.
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