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A Dangerous Method [DVD]

1 disc
Region 1 USA/CA (info)

Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender star in director David Cronenberg's adaptation of Christopher Hampton's play detailing the deteriorating relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as they contend with a particularly troubled patient. The year is 1904. Carl Jung (Fassbender), a disciple of Sigmund Freud (Mortensen), is using Freudian techniques to treat Russian-Jewish psychiatric patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) at Burghlzli Mental Hospital. But the deeper Jung's relationship with Spielrein grows, the further the burgeoning psychiatrist and his highly respected mentor drift apart. As Jung struggles to help his patient overcome some pressing paternal issues, disturbed patient Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel) sets out to test the boundaries of the doctor's professional resolve. Meanwhile, Jung and Freud's continued sessions with Spielrein lead to a series of profound breakthroughs in the methods that doctors use to treat their patients.
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Credits

Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Vincent Cassel, Sarah Gadon
Critic Reviews

"The dialogue is constantly confronting, articulate and stimulating, the intellectual exchanges piercing at times. Cronenberg's direction is at one with the writer's diamond-hard rigor..."
Hollywood Reporter
"Mr. Fassbender is entirely persuasive...and Mr. Mortensen is intriguingly nuanced."
Wall Street Journal
3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he flick is a view of our perpetually nascent relationship to medicine, and particularly the study of consiousness....Michael Fassbender is reliably great..."
Box Office
"[I]t is talk -- smart, satisfying and sometimes even thrilling -- that is at the heart of A DANGEROUS METHOD....The confident directing style of David is essential in making this kind of intellectually stimulating cinema look easy."
Los Angeles Times
"[A] subtle and intellectually thrilling true story..."
New York Times
"[T]he exchanges between Fassbenders Jung and Mortensens Freud are the movies greatest pleasures."
Movieline
"Mortensen, cast against type, particularly excels in the part."
A.V. Club
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "[A]bsorbing....Mortensen's performance is masterful in the way it shows Freud as a contained, analytical logician..."
Chicago Sun-Times
"Fassbender emits a real erotic charge....The movie is a sturdily constructed triangle of desires." -- Grade: A-
Entertainment Weekly
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Leave it to Cronenberg to make the cerebral sizzle....The actors give it their all, especially Knightley..."
Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "[I]ts very restraint makes A DANGEROUS METHOD perhaps Cronenberg's most transgressive movie yet, one in which ideas - rather than their fetishistic signifiers - possess more energy and verve than the most calculated shock effect."
Washington Post