A Boring Method

Had high expectations for this. Huge fan of The Fly and really enjoyed Cronenberg's recent collaborations with Mortensen's, particularly Eastern Promises. Couple that with the in form powerhouse of Fassbender and the ingredients are there for a bold controversial examination of psychoanalysis. The expectation would be that this wouldn't be a cliché ridden biopic of Freud coupled with cheesy accents and mutterings about mother. The premise is to be the birth of psychoanalysis, stemmed from the dissolution of Freud's and Jung's intense friendship.

However the film labours towards its end. Confusing and riddled with inconsistencies this film, quite frankly, was incredibly boring. The device to examine the decaying relationship between Mortensen's Freud and Fassbender's Jung was the 20 minute letter exchange montage. The intense beard stroking made no strides to make these scenes any less boring.

Perhaps the role of Keira Knightly was to catalyse the film and offer us a little more vivacity. Certainly her facial gurning was lively. I personally didn't mind her facial over acting. I think it portrayed a real sense of affliction and very psycho symptomatic performance. What was difficult and borderline offensive was the appalling Russian-Jewish accent. It wasn't necessarily the over enunciation of the accent but the fact that she was the only one who was given one. Admittedly, Mortensen's accent for Freud was slight but I struggled to look past Knightly's intonation. I'm not sure why her Jewishness was crucial to the film and why that made her case more interesting. Yes Jung and Freud were too, but they weren't afflicted with the burden of outrageous Pythonesque voices.

Mortensen's and Fassbender's performances are fine, just incredibly flat and unengaging. Obviously we aren't, god forbid, ever going to see those two speed around in cars or jump off ledges. But when presented with conflict and disagreement, both characters resort to inner expression rather than outer. Its worth noting that subtle preoccupation and rumination can be registered on screen, see Pacino in The Godfather and more recently Oldman in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  Neither of those had the blessing of beards or moustaches to tweak.

Knightly's role is the personification of dispute between Freud and Jung. Where as Jung is a willing student of Freud, he looks further into the case and explores his own relationship with Knightly. Their own sexual desires perpetuate their relationship but more importantly Jung's distance from Freud. Jung's affair with Knightly and concealment from Freud to suit his career needs further exacerbates his relationship.

The films promise to be a deep insightful examination of two figureheads in Psychiatry history but in fact we can get more insight into differing belief values and their implications in any number of Frasier episodes. They are certainly easier to understand and with Cronenburg's track record we would have expected something more intuitive.