Tuesday, January 10, 2012

A Dangerous Method


 A film about Jung and Freud.  By David Cronenberg.  Had to see that.  Sadly it's a biopic instead of some Cronenbergian fantasia, but it features a great characterization of Carl Jung by Michael Fassbender.  It's also interesting historically about anti-semitism, class and the birth of psychoanalysis.  Keira Knightley plays the most intriguing part as Sabina Spielrein,  a 'hysteric' who is Jung's first patient to be treated with Freud's 'talking cure' (psychoanalysis).    Critics have complained that Knightley has insufficient depth to play this part, but I found her convincing.


The film is based on a screenplay adapted from a play by Christopher Hampton, which seems to have been a somewhat perfunctory look at the early days of psychoanalysis.  One couldn't ask for juicier material - two pioneers of psychology, one of whom is involved with a patient who later becomes a substantial contributor to the field herself - but the film, like the play, fails the material.  Sabina Spielrein's story alone - childhood beatings, institutionalization, medical school, original thinking appropriated by Freud and Jung and finally death at the hands of the Nazis - has the making of a mini-series.


Still, it's not a bad film as an introduction to a watershed moment in psychological history and a great jumping off point for further research.
The Skin I Live In


Even when I don't love the films, I love Almodovar.  You have to if you're interested in the politics/psychology of identity.  Or if you love melodrama and fine (mostly female acting).  The Skin I Live In is his first exercise in Body Horror, a genre whose big names include Davids Lynch and Cronenberg.  


Almodovar's films are always carefully crafted and often highly stylized.  This film leans heavily on it's mis-en-scene with meticulously crafted shots and sets that sometimes give you that sense of looking at a mesmerizing photograph or painting.  While the beauty and sense of detachment achieved by this technique is powerful,  it leaves me a bit cold.  Artists often separate the esthetic from the emotional.  Films that are esthetically neat are often unsatisfying and ultimately unimaginative.    A strange critique of Almodovar, and especially of this film, which nicely turns sexual identity inside out.


The film offers another stunning performance by Marisa Paredes, a veteran of numerous Almodovar films.  Antonio Banderas is good as the arrogant plastic surgeon, but I found myself thinking his part had been underwritten.  His doctor stands in too clearly as the representative of male arrogance.  Almodovar usually, if not always,  sides with women in the battle of the sexes, which is natural.  That doesn't excuse stacking the deck against male characters;  drama depends upon balance.


All my quibbles aside, I love Almodovar and recommend this film purely on esthetics, if not on its ability to sway emotions.