It's a handsome and stimulating film, noteworthy more for its terrific acting and provocative ideas than for any kind of dark Cronenbergundian genius.
A Dangerous Method
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United Kingdom, Germany, Canada · 2011
Rated R · 1h 39m
Director David Cronenberg
Starring Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Gadon
Genre Drama, Thriller
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Seduced by the challenge of an impossible case, the driven Dr. Carl Jung takes the unbalanced yet beautiful Sabina Spielrein as his patient. Jung’s weapon is the method of his mentor, the renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Inevitably, both men fall under Sabina’s spell.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
A Dangerous Method concerns itself primarily with sex, but what's most shocking is how conservative it turns out to be.
This complex story from the early days of psychoanalysis engrosses and even amuses as it unfolds through a series of conversations, treatment sessions and exchanged letters.
Slant Magazine by Nick Schager
As rigorous and stimulating as its thematic inquiries are, A Dangerous Method ultimately rests as much on its performances, and in that regard, it succeeds far more than it fails.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
The actors give it their all, especially Knightley, whose jaw- jutting, heavily accented and unfairly criticized portrayal gives the film its fighting spirit.
Miami Herald by Rene Rodriguez
Even a supporting turn by Vincent Cassell as Otto Gross, a fellow psychiatrist, cocaine addict and unapologetic adulterer, fails to enliven the movie: A Dangerous Method makes even a cokehead hedonist boring.
I can't imagine what attracted these two megahunks to such a bore.
Boxoffice Magazine by Sara Maria Vizcarrondo
Michael Fassbender (Fishtank, Inglourious Basterds) is reliably great, severely outclassing costar Knightley's grating performance.
Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek
In short, Cronenberg has made an elegant film, with spanking. There's some mildly kinky sex in A Dangerous Method, but Cronenberg makes it neither exploitive nor so tasteful that it loses its charge.
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
Precise, lucid and thrillingly disciplined, this story of boundary-testing in the early days of psychoanalysis is brought to vivid life by the outstanding lead performances of Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender.
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