donderdag 5 juli 2012

David Cronenberg's new frame of mind


Yesterday I worked my first shift as a volunteer running the film projector at the local arthouse theater Provadja, something I will now do each Wednesday evening. I had an easy start, playing only one film, whereas for the next two months it will be three a night. The film in question was David Cronenberg's second to most recent film, A Dangerous Method, a movie I had wanted to see in regular theaters upon its initial release in March, but I never got around to do so. That's the good thing about this new job, I get another chance to see arthouse, or generally good quality, films I missed the first time (I don't think I'll get another shot at Piranha 3DD though, which has now left movie theaters much to my chagrin), since Provadja gets a lot of these as their weekly movie a few months down the road. Projecting the film was a real piece of cake, thanks to the advantages of digital projection (that same progress got me kicked out of the operator's booth at Pathé though, so it's not all fun and laughs), and I had a fair sized audience of no less than fourteen people (the room the movie played at can hold about 45). If you're lucky, you can watch the whole film from the projector's booth, but sadly, I needed to occasionally focus on other chores, so I missed about 15 minutes, which included a few important scenes here and there. Having missed those, I can't honestly write a full review of this film (that would be a rather dangerous method for any critic), so I'll have to make due with some more general observations: after all, despite not having seen it in its entirety, I still have an opinion on the bits I did get to see, which lead me to believe that A Dangerous Method would be rated by me as about ****/*****, 7or 8 out of 10.



It's fascinating to see how much David Cronenberg has shifted towards other genres. He's still best known as the director of usually extremely graphic horror films, the foremost expert on 'bodily horror', i.e. playing with, deforming or metamorphizing the human body to often shocking effects, having created various grotesque body transformations in films such as The Fly (1986) – Jeff Goldblum's DNA mixed with that of a fly, thus making him devolve into a bizarre human/insect hybrid – or the even more disconcerting Videodrome (1983) – James Woods equipped with a huge orifice, quite explicitly resembling a female's naughty bits, in his abdomen so he can insert and “play” videotapes in his body – which for a long time was really Cronenberg's signature: if you saw the shit he pulled, you immediately realized beyond doubt you were watching a Cronenberg flick! However, in recent years he mellowed quite a bit, increasingly shying away from such gory effects. Though in his suspense thriller A History of Violence (2005) he still applied a few brief moments of universal disgust (hence the 'violence'), it otherwise hardly felt like a Cronenberg film. Eastern Promises (2007), a film in the same genre, even less so. With A Dangerous Method, a film containing virtually no gore at all, Cronenberg seems to have definitively broken with his status as a director once considered an auteur of horror. In fact, the body no longer seems to interest him, as he sets his sights completely on the human mind this time: though not exactly new to this subject matter – for example, Spider (2002) – compared to the wonders of the body it's still largely terra incognita for him. And what better place to start than with the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung?

In examining these two noted historical characters, Cronenberg not only treads on different subject matter, but also explores a genre he has not worked in before, the period drama piece. This is his first motion picture set in past times, but you would hardly notice his inexperience since he proves all too capable of compellingly and accurately portraying the pre-WW I era of Vienna and Zürich, including excellent costume work and the occasional temporal signifiers as beautiful early cars and horse carriages. Of course, it's not all that impressive, since A Dangerous Method is hardly a full-on historical epic and focuses on characters much more than on their settings, but it's a good sign Cronenberg has no trouble expanding his existing oeuvre to include genres he's as yet unaccustomed to. A good start, and hopefully he won't be afraid to turn his scope on the past more often, now that we know he can pull it off seemingly without effort.


As mentioned above though, it's the characters that drive A Dangerous Method, and as such it's the actors portraying them making or breaking the piece. Cronenberg has often proved to get stellar performances out of the top actors in their field, and continues this trend here, reuniting with his present day muse Viggo Mortensen (their third collaboration in a row), as well as Vincent Cassel (second time working together), while adding Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley to his already outstanding resumé of phenomenal actors he has directed. The latter pair has the hardest job in carrying the whole picture, but neither fails in this regard. In the case of Fassbender, who portrays Jung, this was to be expected, considering his status as one of the most sought after and popular actors of today. Knightley surprises much more in her role of his patient Sabina Spielrein, a young woman suffering from hysteria, who soon turns into something more than just another case for the good doctor as the two of them embark on a wild sexual affair. Knightley maneuvers shrewdly from an out of control and insane girl at one moment and a calm and perfectly rational woman the next, being both disturbingly repulsive and sexually intriguing at the same time, and thus an irresistable mark for Jung from a professional point of view, and soon after as a secret mistress. Plus, Knightley seems to have the perfect facial bone structure for this role, as demonstrated by the way in which she alarmingly protrudes her lower jaw in her many fits of rage. Fassbender and Knightley show to have ample chemistry in their roles, initially as doctor and patient, and soon after as lovers on more or less equal footing. Whereas Fassbender plays Jung with the necessary decorum and stoic restraint in the former relationship, he's seen as a more emotional and angry character in the latter, being able to blow off some steam in her company over his guilt ridden marriage with his bland wife Emma (Sarah Gadon), who has an awkward fixation over producing male offspring with him, and his ultimately tumultuous relation with his one time mentor Freud. Together, Spielrein and Jung can be themselves, as they don't need to ignore their sexual fantasies, such as Sabina's desire for spanking due to a childhood trauma. We root for them because of their genuine affections for each other, but certainly in Jung's case (he's a married man with kids after all), abhor them for having taken this inappropriate route.


No matter how good Fassbender and Knightley are on screen together, it's Mortensen who delivers the most impressive performance playing Sigmund Freud. Mortensen, by now fully versed in Cronenberg's routine, proves himself a genuine chameleon yet again, hardly resembling anything we've seen him look like before, older and fatter, smoking a huge cigar in every scene as if it's an actual body part. He portrays Freud as an old man emotionally detached from everyone, including his star student Jung, despite their shared beliefs concerning the benefits of psychoanalysis, while also wholesomely inflexible when the latter tries to convince him not everything can be reduced to subconscious sexual desires. At the same time we see a Freud who desperately means to cling to his acclaimed social status and tries to weed out subversive elements among his circle of (almost exclusively Jewish) associates in fear of all their work being undone by his many enemies in science and politics who are just eager for some controversy to take him out. Apart from the cigar and the talk about sex, Mortensen gives us a whole new Freud, refusing any relation with the usual cliché ridden versions of the character we are so often unfairly treated to. Also noteworthy is the fact Mortensen does not repeat his role from his earlier collaborations with Cronenberg, not taking center stage this time in favour of Fassbender. Undoubtedly the director and his favourite actor realize full well they will work together again many times God willing, and instead of pulling off a Burton/Depp on us, they know they should explore different set-ups if their professional relationship is to continue to prosper, instead of sinking into a dreary routine of overly repeating their previous work.

Aside from the acting and the look of A Dangerous Method, as well as its place in Cronenberg's repertoire, I dare not say anything conclusively about the movie, especially about its overall story, considering I missed several sequences that seemed of great importance plot wise. For instance, at one moment Freud and Jung arrived in New York in good spirits, but when I returned five minutes later they were back home and detesting one another vigorously. I have no idea what went on there, but it was obviously a vital scene. Overall I can say for sure that A Dangerous Method covers an intriguing subject from an equally intriguing director who is not afraid to try and reinvent himself, making the film look gorgeous, and squeezing top performances out of his main cast. However, I did get the feeling the film's plot was fairly predictable (and not just because it's historic subject matter) and delivered in an overly straightforward way, thus not the most exciting stuff imaginable or presented to us in a really gripping, thought provoking manner; but hey, psychoanalysis isn't for everybody. At least the fourteen people in the room all responded in a mildly enthusiastic mood. Given the average age of this audience, I'm sure this would not have been the case if I had projected some of Cronenberg's earlier, more “visually rebellious” (to put it mildly!) work.

And watch the trailer here:


Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten