A Dangerous Method (2011)

Genre : Drama
Country : UK/Germany/Switzerland

Cast :
Michael Fassbender : Carl Jung
Viggo Mortensen : Sigmund Freud
Keira Knightley : Sabina Spielrein

Director :
David Cronenberg

Summary
Suffering from hysteria, Sabina Spielrein is hospitalized under the care of Dr. Carl Jung who has begun using Dr. Sigmund Freud's talking cure with some of his patients. Spielrain's psychological problems are deeply rooted in her childhood and violent father. She is highly intelligent however and hopes to be a doctor, eventually becoming a psychiatrist in her own right. The married Jung and Spielrein eventually become lovers. Jung and Freud develop an almost father-son relationship with Freud seeing the young Jung as his likely successor as the standard-bearer of his beliefs. A deep rift develops between them when Jung diverges from Freud's belief that while psychoanalysis can reveal the cause of psychological problems it cannot cure the patient.

My opinion

Having an opinion about a psychological film is difficult. The movie concentrates on the origins of psychoanalysis, the techniques and the ideas about that. The result is indeed a boring movie, filled with lots of dialogue. The emotional relationship between Knightley and Fassbender though is interesting.

Personally, I like that kind of a "psychiatrist-helps-patien-with-a-problem' film, but rather a chemical co-equal like Damon and Williams in" Good Will Hunting". "A dangerous mind" isn't a movie you can watch after a tiring day at work that ended with headache. It's not mitigating material such as an aspirin.