selenak

The other day I watched A Dangerous Method again, and, as I wrote in my original review, was frustrated all over again by the sensation of a film having all the right ingredients for me - actors I like (Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley), a scriptwriter I like (Christopher Hampton), a director I like (David Cronenberg), complicated relationships, good performances, some excellent dialogue - and yet completely failing to deliver a satisfying whole. I still think the biggest problem is that it focuses on the wrong main character (i.e. Jung), and the second biggest problem that it doesn't overcome its stagebound origins in the way other Hampton adoptions of his plays did. But upon rewatch, other problems occured to me: even within the Jung-as-central-character premise, it avoids digging deeper.

You never get the sense Jung has emotonal turnmoil other than standard intellectual Dad issues and "should I take a mistress or not?" worrying. As opposed to more than fleeting concern whether or not having sex with a (albeit recovering) patient is ethical, in the later case. Jung gets basically gets talked into overcoming his scruples re: sex with a patient by Otto Gross. Gross is doing the seducing, not Sabina (or Jung himself), and while that could have been interesting - see Hampton's adaption of Les Liasons Dangereuses, where he does a lot of third and fourth party stage managing of affairs - here it works against giving the Jung/Sabina affair any deeper dimension whatsoever. I get the sense that on the one hand Hampton and Cronenberg want me to buy Jung falling for Sabina as the woman he can share both his intellectual interests and his desires with, but on the other, it's all tell not show (even their two sex scenes feel aseptic and clinical), while the intellectual and emotional sparking off each other happens between Jung and Freud, and later Freud and Sabina. (And Viggo Mortensen's Freud is still my favourite Freud of them all.)

Cynically, I wonder whether what Hampton really wanted to write about is the relationship between Jung and Freud - it's the one which gets consistent good writing -, but also wanted some actual sex in the play/film script, hence Sabina. But to be fair, he also makes it clear Sabina Spielrein was a fascinating person, with just enough scenes to make me wish the story was about her and it was her progress from patient to therapist we saw in detail, instead of Jung's standard bourgeois male crisis stuff. (I'm talking about the play and film's Jung here, to be clear, in case an indignant C.G. Jung biographer now grinds her or his teeth.) And she's the one making actual progress and ending up winning, so to speak.

So frustrating! But definitely not boring. Also, this time I picked up on more of the musical in jokes. Since Sabina is a Wagner fans, the soundtrack uses a lot of Wagnerian motifs, and the wittiest use is the one of the Valhalla theme at the end of Rheingold , which the movie uses when the skyline of New York comes in sight and Jung is into raptures and says how the Americans are going to love psychoanalysis, which sardonic Freud comments with "before or after they accuse us of spreading the plague?" Given that the splendour of Valhalla at the end of Rheingold is one bought by deception, blackmail and betrayal and also doomed to destruction three operas later, this is very apropos.

In other fannish news: the third season won't be shown for many months more to come, but Black Sails has already been granted a fourth, which makes me a very happy watcher indeed. Also, moving on to another of my fandoms, some great Vanessa Ives icons (from Penny Dreadful).