A Dangerous Method -- David Cronenberg/Viggo Mortensen's latest

amateurist otm. Brevity is the soul of something or other in late Cronenberg.

My own reservations about Knightley's hysterics disappeared after a few minutes (I didn't know who she was until I saw the credits; I'd forgotten she was in it).

it was pretty obv by mid-December that this film was going to be ignored in the trophy wars, its only shot at a prolonged theatrical run. Anyway, look fwd to rewatching on disc. xxp

they gave him this one. Pattinson next

for most of the movie, esp. the 1st half, i was compelled just by the beauty and efficiency of cronenberg's late style. crisp, judicious editing, no-fuss mise en scene, interesting use of the split-field diopter. a pleasure to watch, basically.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, February 16, 2012 10:39 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really feeling this, and i watched eastern promises recently and felt it there too. it's just so nice to watch someone who knows what he's doing.

yeah, sometimes i'd just think, "yeah, that's exactly where he needed to cut."

what's interesting is i don't think cronenberg is a "natural" filmmaker in the sense of like godard or someone who just gets his hands (not literally) on a camera and immediately knows exactly what the fuck he's doing. his early films can be clumsy, sloppy, or just undistinguished stylistically in a way that blunts the power of the (undeniably compelling) stories and themes. but as he's moved along his stylistic palette (sp?) has gotten smaller and his decisions more and more thoughtful and just right. he's always been a restrained, un-flashy director, but his hand has just become surer and surer. i first noticed this around crash and spider (i don't like spider much, but the style is sublimely controlled).

what did people think about the digitally composited boat scenes?

i dunno, i just wanted the boat

have you ever considered the possibility that the boat is the penis?

sometimes a boat...

sometimes a boat iirc

did I mention already on this thread how much I enjoyed freud's office - amazing art direction

Why is Viggo not in Cosmopolis?

i mean he could have been the limo driver or something

i know i want these dudes to make movies together until theyre both really old

cronenberg is already pushing into oldness, but he looks good for his age (68 i think).

and yes re. art direction. the contrast b/t jung's office (and home) and freud's home was effective, i think. it rhymed with the way freud accuses of jung of being a hypocrite for proclaiming his normalcy so loudly while being as fucked up as anyone else.

i think the last third of the movie could have actually used an extra 10–15 minutes just to clarify the evolving dynamics b/t the three main characters.

oh wow i didn't realize he was that old

he's been doin' it for 35-40 years after all

more than 40. first quasi-feature was in 1969.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_(film)

yeah I saw Stereo, didn't recall the year

i don't think 'dry' is the word, because it was very glossy, but i found this so stifling. & i thought keira was really good, but that how expressive or affecting she could be was limited because it was so leaden. i just didn't understand why the veneer of formality was totally necessary, like the scene on the ferry. someone says something charged & a bassoon blows & a piano tinkles for a moment. i felt like i was reading the novelisation of a film, it was so piecemeal, so ornate. i enjoyed the freudian psych 101 but that was the only register in which it connected for me, as a kinda didactic learning appendix rather than as an engaging or cinematic portrait.

did I mention already on this thread how much I enjoyed freud's office - amazing art direction

― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Thursday, February 16, 2012 11:12 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark

yea totes

what did people think about the digitally composited boat scenes?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, February 16, 2012 11:08 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark

you mean jung's boat?

no when they take the boat to america

"jung's boat" sounds like an indie band from 1988

freud's pipe

otto's ladder

i liked this it was pretty good. i feel i'll have to rewatch because on reflection my judgement of keira knightley's performance was probably unfairly tinted by the ott-ness of the first few scenes where her jaw was doing all the acting. it felt a bit slight and maybe wasn't quite fleshed out enough to work as a character study, but as biopics go i'd rather have scenes of p unfiltered psychoanalytic chat for some reason than scene after scene of expository ~major events~.

so Viggo's next role is as William Burroughs/Old Bull Lee in On the Road...?

i think the exaggerated quality of knightley's performance in the first reel was calculated -- it demonstrates how far she's progressed thanks (in part) to her sessions w/ jung. and it allows her to play her later scenes a bit "wiggy" without seeming too mannered -- since she then seems positively normal compared to those first scenes.

Was going to see this in Memphis today, but we're going to stick close to home while the ugly weather passes through the area, and go tomorrow instead.

YOUR CHILDREN ARE GLORIOUS

this was good but i never got a handle on what was keeping the spark alive between jung and spielrein, which is a shame because it's the pivot of the whole movie

i also didn't really buy her as a gifted thinker, which it seems the real spielrein was

****SPOILERS AND SHIT****

i agree with your first point. i cringed a bit when jung delivered the money line, "you're the only one i've ever truly loved." i don't mind that it's, as they say in these parts, on the nose. but it does seem to reduce a fairly complex and ambiguous story into something a bit too neat. there's no way to know whether we're to take that pronouncement as definitive, but seeing as it's stuck in the ultimate scene it's hard to know what else to do w/ it.

btw i don't know if that quote is verbatim but it's not far off.

felt like this movie needed a narrower focus to avoid feeling shallow in its approach to everything - is it a movie about psychoanalysis, or a romance between jung & spielrein, or an account of jung & freud's friendship, or a jung biopic...? i dont think it really does justice to any of these elements

the freud/jung stuff was most interesting to me

me too, cuz freud was by far the most fascinating character in the movie

i did kind of enjoy the sort of... confused and sour note it ended on with jung sitting there. which made a genuinely interesting contrast with the "whatever happened to..." titles before the credits.

do you think that's just b/c of viggo's general charisma and awesomeness or do you think it was a more interestingly written character?

xpost

YES

That Freud is the more interesting writer and thinker, in my judgment, comes through in Viggo's perf.

i think the jung character comes across by far as the least self-possessed, or maybe we could say having the least self-knowledge of the three. at the same time he's not nearly as enigmatic as freud, who seems to see through everything.

everyone looked v nice in the movie, excellent interior decore, good clothes, vv strage performance by keira knightley

think everyone likes the Freud/Jung stuff the best. Might not have been quite as interesting if it was the whole movie though. It's a perfect role for Viggo really, he can just pop up occasionally smirking and waving his cigar around and put the other actors in the shade

the end shot w/jung sitting there immediately brought to mind the final shot of eastern promises

i think i mentioned this already but a woman behind me yelped out 'WHAT??' when it went to black on that shot

'NO!!!!'

POOP!

yeah it felt early, like there was something else to come. nothing was resolved!

it moved along very quickly for a 100-minute movie, didn't it?