Set in the early 20th century, 'A Dangerous Method' examines the complex intellectual and personal relationships between pioneering psychoanalysts Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and their shared patient Sabina Spielrein. The film explores themes of desire, professional rivalry, and the birth of modern psychoanalysis. Starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, and Keira Knightley, it is a stylish and provocative period drama directed by David Cronenberg.
Cronenberg transforms the birth of psychoanalysis into a taut psychological thriller, mining the fraught mentor-student dynamic between Jung and Freud for intellectual intrigue and barely suppressed desire. Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender spark against each other with cerebral intensity, while the film's cool, measured style mirrors the very theories it explores.
Cronenberg films Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein in early-twentieth-century Vienna. The film is the founding of psychoanalysis through a single affair.
