A Dangerous Method vs It's Kind Of A Funny Story

At first, mental health issues were handled by stoning you in the town square because you were a witch. And then later, you were put in an asylum for nymphomaniacs. Right? I’m making up the history here, if you hadn’t guessed. Treatments for mental problems have only been non-terrifying for about a hundred years. We have Carl Jung to thank for that.

The first patient we see visit Jung (Michael Fassbender) is Sabina (Keira Knightley), a young Russian woman so deep in the throws of hysteria that her face and body become locked in the pained, distorted expression of someone having a seizure. Her fingers curl, her jaw juts outward, and she can barely speak. Sabina’s earliest memories of are of abuse, and any reminder of them leaves her completely debilitated. Dr. Jung informs Sabina that her treatment will be primarily based on conversation, and that he’ll sit behind her, to keep her from becoming self-conscious. I assume it works, because their therapy continues long enough for Dr. Jung to take Sabina on as an assistant, reading a little light meter during personality tests.

A couple years pass, and Sabina is stable enough to live on her own, continue her education, and begin her own research. Of course, she still needs to see Dr. Jung, only now she sees him in her apartment. Sabina and Dr. Jung’s meetings in her apartment cross the line of doctor/patient privilege, and give A Dangerous Method a surprisingly heady, kinky rush.

During this same period of time, Dr. Jung has become friends with Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson). Freud is of course already highly-regarded, and serves as a mentor for Jung. They have long conversations that often dissolve into therapy sessions for Jung, in which Freud finds sexual parallels in each of his stories and dreams. Jung feels like there’s value in studying things like precognition, telepathy and telekinesis, but Freud dismisses the idea that the mind is capable of influencing the outside world. We see that view played out in their stories as well. Dr. Jung, despite having a wife and baby at home, has a free imagination about the possibilities of life. By the film’s peak, he’s become down right adventuresome, at least in his opinions and attitudes. At home, things are more staid and conventional. I never got a sense of much love between Jung and his wife, beyond maybe a traditional form of comfort in the familiar. His wife (Sarah Gadon), reminded me of Winona Ryder’s character in The Age Of Innocence. She’s wealthy, and defers to the man in her life, but to mistake her demureness for naïveté is taking a pretty big gamble. I’m sure some viewers will pity Jung’s wife, but she’s only a victim for as long as she’s willing to be. I found her less interesting than Sabina, but Jung’s reasons for his role in each of their lives, and theirs in his, were pretty sound.

Kink aside, much of A Dangerous Method is standard historical drama. We get handy time and setting subtitles at the beginning of each (frequent) chapter of the film. Some of the shifts were too abrupt for my taste. We’d settle in on a rich conversation between Freud and Jung, only to cut away instantly to another city, two years later. Likewise, the time shifts cause great leaps in Sabina’s mental state that might have been illuminating to see play out. She’s screaming and thrashing about in the mud, then she’s working on her studies and living alone. David Cronenberg is such an unconventional director, it’s a bit of a surprise to see him take on something as traditional as A Dangerous Method, with its drawing room debates and adherence to historical documents. A Dangerous Method contains none of Cronenberg’s usual flights of greed-based violence. What we have instead is a sort of sexual freedom uncommon in other movies, and I’d wager uncommon to the times of Jung and Freud as well. Dr. Jung maintains separate lives; at home it’s one of courtly manners, wet nurses, and rote sexuality. At Sabina’s apartment, the sex is of boundaries pushed and belts swung. It’s rough and exciting, and potentially dangerous for the relapse-prone Sabina. There’s a moment with some blood that is at once practical and honest, but also a wink to those of us in the audience expecting Cronenberg to bring the gore.

A Dangerous Method is smartly, and somewhat cheekily, cast and performed. Michael Fassbender fills Dr. Jung with a passionate curiosity for his own passionate curiosity. Dr. Jung is always searching, asking, testing. His fascination with Sabina’s journey to recovery leads him to an awakening of his own. I saw A Dangerous Method the day after I saw Shame, and kept thinking how helpful it would be if Fassbender’s character in Shame could just sit down with Dr. Jung for an afternoon talk. As Freud, Viggo Mortenson gets to be the voice of the previous generation, groaning through Jung’s more elaborate theories. He’s also a cigar-chomping metaphor, puffing around A Dangerous Method’s sexual subplots (Vincent Cassell helps with this as well, as a patient who gets a perverse joy out of showing Dr. Jung the fun of embracing darker impulses). The biggest surprise is Keira Knightley. As Sabina, Knightley has the job of being the audience’s introduction to the practices of the time. She’s our guinea pig for what treatments work and which do not, and gaining our sympathies is key. I was with her from the start. She’s also required to be the film’s sexual and romantic touchstone, its voice of reason, and the agent of change for the plot, all while playing a non-fiction character. Sabina is subject to the rules, laws and desires of men in her culture, but also in complete control of her own destiny. I’m not sure Knightley is who I would have picked to play Sabina, but I’m glad David Cronenberg did.

The Age Of Innocence is another movie of characters trapped in a culture divided by changing sexual mores, directed by an icon better known for handling more brutish subject matter. If you’re looking for an adults-only, costume drama double feature, you could do so much worse. For example, you could bring it to the present day and watch It’s Kind Of A Funny Story, which takes the idea of A Dangerous Method’s “talking cure” and treats it like a fun thing to do when you’re bored, or maybe a little stuck creatively. Check in to the Psych Ward, chill out, meet a cute girl, no sweat.

The kind of funny story of the title belongs to Craig (Kier Gilcrest), a high school kid who’s smart and quiet, and I guess lonely or something. He’s just a bit muddled, not sick, but checks himself into the adult Psych Ward anyway, to make sure he’s not crazy. He’s not. He’s not even movie crazy. He wouldn’t fall under the banner of Borderline Personality Disorder, or clinical depression for that matter. He just doesn’t look forward to much, or feel much hope. Dr. Jung would be baffled not to find anything diagnosable wrong with Craig. Dr. Freud would tell him to go home and masturbate. His therapist (Viola Davis) seems kind of bemused by his precociousness. Craig already seems to know the language of therapy, how to diagnose himself, how to be cured. He grows the most in his week of treatment, through art (Craig draws beautiful ink cityscapes), and through his friendships with Bobby (Zach Galifianakis, so good. I’d watch a full movie of him and Viola Davis talking shit out.), and Noelle (Emma Roberts), the latter of whom has an artful scar on her cheek. Craig thinks she’s beautiful anyway, obviously, as if he’s the one to win over. Craig is a sad-sack slack-jaw (Gilcrest is fine in the role, just calling them like I see them), and is pursued not just by Roberts, but by Zoe Kravitz. But he just needs to work on himself first, everybody, because It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is really Garden State.

Remember in Garden State when Natalie Portman and Zach Braff are in the bathtub (or in front of the fireplace maybe?), and she tells him (I’m paraphrasing), “When my mom sees me really thinking about something, she’ll say ‘You’re in it.’ That’s you, right now you’re really in it.” And just because he thinks she’s meaningful, and sounds sincere, everyone went out and bought the soundtrack and a decade later we still can’t get rid of Coldplay? But it’s actually meaningless dialogue that could have been said by either character about anything? It’s Kind Of A Funny Story plays like it was written and directed by that line of dialogue. It’s Kind Of A Funny story tries way too hard to be clever and modern and young, but it’s so much we’ve seen before. Patients put on scrubs and pretend to be doctors. Formerly quiet patients express themselves musically. Good artists are troubled artists. The kids in It’s Kind Of A Funny Story would run screaming from Sabina and her sexually-repressed rages. I bet their doctors would find her a nice change of pace.

A Dangerous Method: B+

It’s Kind Of A Funny Story: C