| |
RATING:  
SINGAPORE: "A Dangerous Method" is a provocative film that manages to impress and unsettle at the same time, all while skillfully keeping the audience emotionally detached from the story to make them think about the events in the film.
Based on true events, the film revolves around Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), a Swiss psychiatrist who adheres to prominent psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's (Viggo Mortensen) ideas on psychoanalysis.
It documents Jung and Freud's complex relationship both with each other and Jung's18-year-old patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).
Through Jung's sessions with Spielrein, he discovers that she is a masochist who feels sexually aroused whenever she is humiliated or in pain, as a result of the beatings she received from her father when she was a child.
Jung manages to resolve Spielrein's issues, but also becomes sexually involved with her, despite being a married man.
However, when Jung tried to put a stop to their sordid affair, she starts to plot against him and drives a wedge between him and Freud.
The two men later discover that they have vastly different ideologies and part ways.
"A Dangerous Method" is intelligent and fairly straightforward.
However, it is dialogue-heavy and can sometimes lose the audience along the way, especially when the actors exchange too much technical jargon in some scenes.
Knightley's unrestrained performance as Jung's disturbed patient Spielrein definitely deserves recognition.
The actress brought her character to life with her manic twitches and folded arms at weird angles.
In fact, her performance is so good that it becomes slightly unsettling.
Fortunately, her equally talented co-stars Fassbender and Mortensen portrayed their characters just as realistically, and kept Knightley from smothering the film with her performance.
The film also keeps the audience from becoming too emotionally invested in the film.
While this might sound like a bad thing to do when making a film, rules are meant to be broken and it works perfectly for "A Dangerous Method".
The film forced audiences to look step back and look at the storyline objectively as a third party, which allows them to think more deeply about what's happening in the film, and examine the characters' actions from various perspectives.
-CNA/pn
"A Dangerous Method" opens on March 1.
|
