A Dangerous Method

So, we have Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) as a young doctor, who has become interested in Freud's "Talking Cure", which he intends to a new patient, Sabina Spielrein (Kiera Knightley), suffering from hysteria. This decision leads to great changes in his life, both a growing relationship with Spielrein, and a professional and personal friendship with Freud (Viggo Mortensen).

We then follow both of these relationships through to their eventual dissolution, as morals, ethics and professional differences take their toll.

As this is a David Cronenberg film, there's quite some emphasis on the visceral, with Kiera Knightley giving a surprisingly physical and unattractive performance as a hysterical, twitchy neurotic, and with her and Fassbender having some quite sweaty sex in grubby rooms, in sharp contrast to the starched clean linens of Jung's life with his wife.

Ultimately, though, the film does run aground near the end, since as, through no fault of the writer, director, or actors, all of the principal characters saw fit to conclude the final third of their relationships merely through the use of some quite terse and snotty letters. So unfortunately the thing really begins to drag towards the end, as there is a seemingly endless sequence of scenes where one actor reads out a letter in voiceover, while another reads it and frowns or raises their eyebrows at the appropriate moment. I don't know how you could have improved this without lying; yes, you could have recast Jung and Freud's final exchanges as snarled insults in between thrown punches in a fight to the death on the deck of a sinking ship, before the survivor takes the last lifeboat, but that would not actually be true. So, really, blame Freud and Jung for leading insufficiently cinematic lives.

Despite that reservation, even when the presentation is fighting hard to keep your interest, the content is fascinating enough to make you want to make the effort, although effort it indubitably is at times.