A Dangerous Method | |
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Directed by | David Cronenberg |
Screenplay by | Christopher Hampton |
Based on |
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Produced by | Jeremy Thomas |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Peter Suschitzky |
Edited by | Ronald Sanders |
Music by | Howard Shore |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
Countries |
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Language | English |
Budget | $14 million [1] |
Box office | $30 million [2] |
A Dangerous Method is a 2011 historical drama film directed by David Cronenberg. The film stars Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Gadon, and Vincent Cassel. Its screenplay was adapted by writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, which was based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein.
Set across a period from 1902 to the eve of World War I, A Dangerous Method follows the turbulent relationships between Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, Sigmund Freud, founder of the discipline of psychoanalysis, and Sabina Spielrein, initially Jung's patient and later a physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts. [3]
A co-production between British, Canadian, and German production companies, the film marks the third consecutive collaboration between Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (after A History of Violence and Eastern Promises ). This is also the third Cronenberg film made with British film producer Jeremy Thomas, after they collaborated on the William Burroughs adaptation Naked Lunch and the J. G. Ballard adaptation Crash . Filming took place between May and July 2010 in Cologne on a soundstage, with exterior shots filmed in Vienna.
A Dangerous Method premiered at the 68th Venice Film Festival and was also featured at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. [4] [5] The film was theatrically released in Germany on 10 November 2011 by Universal Pictures International, in Canada on 13 January 2012 by Entertainment One and in the United Kingdom on 10 February 2012 by Lionsgate. The film grossed $24 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, many praising the performances of Mortensen and Fassbender and Cronenberg's direction. It appeared on several critics' year-end lists. At the 70th Golden Globe Awards, Mortensen was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his portrayal of Freud.
In August 1904, Sabina Spielrein arrives at the Burghölzli, the pre-eminent psychiatric hospital in Zürich, suffering from hysteria and begins a new course of treatment with the young Swiss doctor Carl Jung. He uses word association and dream interpretation as part of his approach to psychoanalysis and finds that Spielrein's condition was triggered by the humiliation and sexual arousal she felt as a child when her father spanked her naked.
Jung and chief of medicine Eugen Bleuler recognize Spielrein's intelligence and energy and allow her to assist them in their experiments. She measures the physical reactions of subjects during word association, to provide empirical data as a scientific basis for psychoanalysis. She soon learns that much of this new science is founded on the doctors' observations of themselves, each other, and their families, not just their patients. The doctors, Jung and Freud, correspond at length before they meet, and begin sharing their dreams and analysing each other, and Freud himself soon adopts Jung as his heir and agent.
Jung finds in Spielrein a kindred spirit, and their attraction deepens due to transference. Jung resists the idea of cheating on his wife, Emma, and breaking the taboo of sex with a patient, but his resolve is weakened by the wild and unrepentant confidences of his new patient Otto Gross, a brilliant, philandering, unstable psychoanalyst. Gross decries monogamy in general and suggests that resistance to transference is symptomatic of the repression of normal, healthy sexual impulses, exhorting Jung to indulge himself with abandon.
Jung finally begins an affair with Spielrein, including rudimentary bondage and spanking. Things become even more tangled as he becomes her advisor to her dissertation; he publishes not only his studies of her as a patient but eventually her treatise as well. Spielrein wants to conceive a child with Jung, but he refuses. After he attempts to confine their relationship again to doctor and patient, she appeals to Freud for his professional help, and forces Jung to tell Freud the truth about their relationship, reminding him that she could have publicly damaged him but did not want to.
Jung and Freud travel to America. However, cracks appear in their friendship as they begin to disagree more frequently on matters of psychoanalysis. Jung and Spielrein meet to work on her dissertation in Switzerland and begin their sexual relationship once more. However, after Jung refuses to leave his wife for her, Spielrein decides to go to Vienna. She meets Freud and says that although she sides with him, she believes he and Jung need to reconcile for psychoanalysis to continue to develop.
Following Freud's collapse at an academic conference, he and Jung continue correspondence via letters. They decide to end their relationship after increasing hostilities and accusations regarding the differences in their conceptualisation of psychoanalysis. Spielrein marries a Russian doctor and, while pregnant, visits Jung and his wife. They discuss psychoanalysis and Jung's new mistress. Jung confides that his love for Spielrein made him a better person.
The film's footnote reveals the eventual fates of the four analysts. Gross starved to death in Berlin in 1920. Freud died of cancer in London in 1939 after being driven out of Vienna by the Nazis. Spielrein trained several analysts in the Soviet Union before she and her two daughters were shot by the Nazis in 1942. Jung emerged from a nervous breakdown to become the world's leading psychologist before dying in 1961. [6]
Hampton's earliest version of the screenplay, dating back to the 1990s, was written for Julia Roberts in the role of Sabina Spielrein, but the film was never realized. Hampton re-wrote the screenplay for the stage before producer Jeremy Thomas acquired the rights for both the earlier script and the stage version. [7]
The film was produced by Britain's Recorded Picture Company, with Germany's Lago Film and Canada's Prospero Film acting as co-producers. [8] Additional funding was provided by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MFG Baden-Württemberg, Filmstiftung NRW, the German Federal Film Board and Film Fund, Ontario Media Development Corp and Millbrook Pictures. [9]
Christoph Waltz was initially cast as Sigmund Freud, but was replaced by Viggo Mortensen due to a scheduling conflict. [10] Christian Bale had been in talks to play Carl Jung, but he too had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts. [11]
The filming began on 26 May and ended on 24 July 2010. [9] Exteriors were shot in Vienna and interiors were filmed on a soundstage in Cologne (MMC Studios Köln), Germany. Viennese locations included the Café Sperl, Berggasse 19, and the Schloss Belvedere. Lake Constance (Bodensee) stood in for Lake Zurich. [12]
A noted feature of the film is the extensive use in the musical score of leitmotifs from Wagner's third Ring opera Siegfried, mostly in piano transcription. The composer Howard Shore has said that the structure of the film is based on the structure of the Siegfried opera. [13]
Universal Pictures released the film in German-speaking territories, while Lionsgate took rights to the United Kingdom [14] and Sony Pictures Classics distributed the film in the United States. [15] The film debuted at the Venice Film Festival in Italy on 2 September 2011.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 78% of 191 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10.The website's consensus reads: "A provocative historical fiction about the early days of psychoanalysis, A Dangerous Method is buoyed by terrific performances by Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen." [16] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [17]
Louise Keller reports from Urban Cinephile, "The best scenes are those between Mortensen and Fassbender...the tension between the two men mounts as their views conflict: Freud insists that sex is an underlying factor in every neurosis while Jung, interested in spiritualism and the occult, is disappointed by what he considers to be Freud's 'rigid pragmatism.'" [18]
Andrew O'Hehir's review on Salon notes that on the one hand Freud's "single-minded focus on sexual repression as the source of neurosis led to the creation of psychiatry as a legitimate medical and scientific field—one that was often resistant to change and dominated by authoritarian father figures." On the other hand, Sabina's effect on Jung, and "the discoveries they had made together, both in the office and the bedroom," including the potential in "a creative fusion of opposites—doctor and patient, man and woman, dark and light, Jew and Aryan," led to a falling out between the two men "over a variety of issues, most notably the scientific limits of psychiatric inquiry." [19]
In contrast, Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that, despite the film's exploration of "the way our subconscious works, the way we repress, and suppress, natural urges—the constant battle between the rational and the instinctive, the civilized and the wild", the film "feels distant, and clinical, in ways you wished it did not." [20] In an interview with The Daily Beast 's Marlow Stern, Cronenberg himself is quoted as saying that the love scenes between Jung and Spielrein were "quite clinical. These were people who, even when they were having sex, they were observing themselves having sex because they were so interested in their reactions to things." [11]
The film was listed at number 5 on Film Comment magazine's Best Films of 2011 list. [21]
A Dangerous Method was listed on many critics' 2011 top ten lists. [22]
Year | Award | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
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2011 | National Board of Review Awards [23] | Spotlight Award | Michael Fassbender (Also for Shame , Jane Eyre , and X-Men: First Class ) | Won |
Satellite Awards | Actor in a Supporting Role | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards | Best Actor | Michael Fassbender (Also for Shame , Jane Eyre , and X-Men: First Class ) | Won | |
2012 | Golden Globe Awards [24] | Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated |
London Critics' Circle Film Awards [25] | British Actor of the Year | Michael Fassbender (Also for Shame ) | Won | |
Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards [26] | Actor of the Year | Michael Fassbender (Also for Shame , Jane Eyre , and X-Men: First Class ) | Nominated | |
Genie Awards [27] | Best Motion Picture | Martin Katz, Marco Mehlitz, Jeremy Thomas | Nominated | |
Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design | James Mcateer | Won | ||
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role | Michael Fassbender | Nominated | ||
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role | Viggo Mortensen | Won | ||
Achievement in Costume Design | Denise Cronenberg | Nominated | ||
Achievement in Direction | David Cronenberg | Nominated | ||
Achievement in Editing | Ronald Sanders, C.C.E. A.C.E. | Nominated | ||
Achievement in Music – Original Score | Howard Shore | Won | ||
Achievement in Overall Sound | Orest Sushko, Christian Cooke | Won | ||
Achievement in Sound Editing | Wayne Griffin, Rob Bertola, Tony Currie, Andy Malcolm, Michael O'Farrell | Won | ||
Achievement in Visual Effects | Jason Edwardh, Oliver Hearsey, Jim Price, Milan Schere, Wojciech Zielinski | Nominated | ||
Sant Jordi Award | Best Foreign Actor | Michael Fassbender (Also for Jane Eyre and X-Men: First Class ) | Won | |
Directors Guild of Canada Awards [28] | Best Direction | David Cronenberg | Won | |
Best Feature Film | Won | |||
Best Production Design – Feature Film | James McAteer | Won | ||
Best Picture Editing – Feature Film | Ron Sanders | Won | ||
Best Sound Editing | Rob Bertola, Tony Currie, Alastair Gray, Michael O'Farrell, Gren-Erich Zwicker | Won |
David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers (1975), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. is an American actor, musician, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of various accolades, including nominations for three Academy Awards for Best Actor, three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Independent Spirit Award.
Keira Christina Knightley is an English actress. Known for her work in independent films and blockbusters, particularly period dramas, she has received numerous accolades, including nominations for two Academy Awards, two BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, and a Laurence Olivier Award. In 2018, she was appointed an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to drama and charity.
Free association is the expression of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes. The technique is used in psychoanalysis which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and colleague, Josef Breuer.
Sabina Nikolayevna Spielrein was a Russian physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts. She was in succession the patient, then student, then colleague of Carl Gustav Jung, with whom she had an intimate relationship during 1908–1910, as is documented in their correspondence from the time and her diaries. She also met, corresponded, and had a collegial relationship with Sigmund Freud. She worked with and psychoanalysed Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. She worked as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, teacher and paediatrician in Switzerland and Russia. In a thirty-year professional career, she published over 35 papers in three languages, covering psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, psycholinguistics and educational psychology. Among her works in the field of psychoanalysis is the essay titled "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being", written in German in 1912.
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness. It was originally proposed by Sabina Spielrein in her paper "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being" in 1912, which was then taken up by Sigmund Freud in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This concept has been translated as "opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts". In Beyond thePleasure Principle, Freud used the plural "death drives" (Todestriebe) much more frequently than the singular.
Jeremy Jack Thomas, CBE is a British film producer, founder and chairman of Recorded Picture Company. He produced Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2006 he received a European Film Award for Outstanding European Achievement in World Cinema. His father was director Ralph Thomas, while his uncle Gerald Thomas directed all of the films in the Carry On franchise.
The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, formerly known as the Wednesday Psychological Society, was the oldest psychoanalysis society in the world. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status as the international psychoanalytic authority of the time, the Wednesday group was reconstituted under its new name with Sigmund Freud as President, a position he relinquished in 1910 in favor of Alfred Adler. During its 36-year history, between 1902 and 1938, the Society had a total of 150 members.
Eastern Promises is a 2007 British-Canadian gangster film directed by David Cronenberg from a screenplay by Steven Knight. The film tells the story of Anna, a Russian-British midwife who delivers the baby of a drug-addicted 14-year-old trafficked Ukrainian girl who dies in childbirth. After Anna learns that the teen was forced into prostitution by the Russian Mafia in London, the leader of the Russian gangsters threatens the baby's life, and Anna is warned off by his menacing henchman.
Otto Hans Adolf Gross was an Austrian psychoanalyst. A maverick early disciple of Sigmund Freud, he later became an anarchist and joined the utopian Ascona community.
Freud: The Secret Passion, or simply Freud, is a 1962 American biographical drama film directed by John Huston and produced by Wolfgang Reinhardt. Based on the life of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, it stars Montgomery Clift as Freud and Susannah York as his patient Cecily Koertner. Other cast members include Larry Parks, Susan Kohner, Eileen Herlie, Eric Portman, and David McCallum. The screenplay was by Charles Kaufman and Reinhardt, with some elements from a script by Jean-Paul Sartre, who withdrew his name from the film.
HanWay Films is an independent British international sales, distribution and marketing company specializing in theatrical feature films.
John Michael Kerr was an American editor, psychologist, and author raised in New York City. He was best known for his 1993 nonfiction book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, which explores an episode in the history of psychoanalysis. It examined the relationship between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sabina Spielrein.
Cattiva is a 1991 Italian drama film directed by Carlo Lizzani. The film is loosely based on real life events of Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, and of Sabina Spielrein. For this film Giuliana De Sio was awarded a David di Donatello for Best Actress.
Henry Zvi Lothane is a Polish-born American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, educator and author. Lothane is currently Clinical Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, specializing in the area of psychotherapy. He is the author of some eighty scholarly articles and reviews on various topics in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and the history of psychotherapy, as well as the author of a book on the famous Schreber case, entitled In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry. In Defense of Schreber examines the life and work of Daniel Paul Schreber against the background of 19th and early 20th century psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
The Soul Keeper is a 2002 Italian-French-British romance-drama film directed by Roberto Faenza. It is loosely based on real life events of Russian psychoanalyst and physician Sabina Spielrein and notably on her therapeutic and sentimental relationship with fellow psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.
Archaic mother is the mother of earliest infancy, whose continuing influence is traced in psychoanalysis, and whose (repressed) presence is considered to underlie the horror film.
Scheina Grebelskaja (1886-19?) was a Russian psychoanalyst who worked at the Burghölzli, the psychiatric hospital of the University of Zürich. She was one of the early pioneers in psychoanalytic theory. Her work was fundamental in supporting the Freudian theory about the existence of subconscious drives.
A Dangerous Method (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack to the 2011 film A Dangerous Method, directed by David Cronenberg. The film's musical score is composed by Howard Shore, which consisted of 18 cues tuned for the film, along with the opera piece "Siegfried Idyll" by Richard Wagner. The score was released through Sony Classical Records on 21 November 2011.