Breaking News from Film Comment Magazine:
Though psychoanalysis has fallen out of fashion in the realms of academia and clinical therapy, it undeniably shaped both (for better and worse) during the 20th century. David Cronenberg’s latest project, A Dangerous Method, aims to bring the talking cure into the multiplex. Based on the play by Christopher Hampton, the story focuses on Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and his treatment and affair with Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a daughter from a prominent medical family whose parental abuse has led to nervous ticks and sadomasochistic tendencies. Mentor Freud (Viggo Mortensen) was equally fascinated with Spielrein, but tensions rose with the arrival of a depraved patient (Vincent Cassel), driving a permanent rift between the two men. Spielrein’s case–and her own theories (she later became a psychoanalyst) –equally influenced Freud’s thinking about the “death wish” and Jung’s views on “transformation.” Set to begin filming in May, Cronenberg remarked, “I have long been drawn to the story of erotic daring between these two good doctors and the woman who both divided and defined them. History can only hint at the psychological and physical terrain they opened up, but a film can explore it.”