A Dangerous Method is a film based around the turn of the 19th century following the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and their relationship with mental patient Sabina Spielrein, starring actors Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender. Joining film director David Cronenberg and writer Christopher Hampton, the stars talked to View’s Matthew Turner about working on set with Keira Knightley, bringing two of the most famous psychoanalysts back to life and the difficulties in funding female-lead films.
David, this is a departure from many of your films - what elements of the script attracted you?
I sometimes have to remind people that the first film I ever made was a seven-minute short called Transfer, which was about a psychiatrist and his patient. So it's business as usual! Oliver Reed plays a psychotherapist in my movie The Brood. When I'm making a movie, I don't really think about my other movies at all. I think about the movie we're making, and the movie is telling me what it wants, and I give it what it needs. I don't try to impose any preconceived ideas or presumptions on it.
I don't normally get to speak so much, even in David's movies. For once he couldn't tell me to shut up...
Christopher, you've adapted your own stage work before - did you feel any changes needed to be made?
This started life as a screenplay no-one wanted to make. Someone ten years ago turned it into a stage play. I was very much guided by David, who'd read the original screenplay and the stage play. I think it's closer to the stage play than it was the original screenplay. David was very comfortable, which some directors are not, with scenes that run longer than a page.
To the cast, how did it feel portraying such eminent men with complex histories?
Of course it's daunting. There's a lot of material, which made it easier. I was a little hesitant to say yes, as it seemed a big stretch, in terms of what he looked like. My idea of him, it felt a bit of a leap. If it had been another director I may have been more cowardly about it. But with David, I knew I would be in good hands with him and his crew. And I get to see Vincent Cassel again, and that Michael was going to be Jung, and that Keira was in it. And Sarah Gadon, who plays Emma Jung, is a really good actress as well.
There were many more reasons to say yes and take the plunge. It was an education in terms of acting, and using different methods - speaking a lot more, really well-written words. Christopher's script is like a very well-manicured garden, with exotic blooms, in the shadow of which are really disturbing little creatures with secrets! It was a lot of fun to play as an actor. I don't normally get the chance to speak so much, even in David's movies. For once he couldn't tell me to shut up all the time! We had a lot of fun.
David's sense of humour is not unlike Freud's, and his wit and intelligence ... you could say about David what the New York Times said about Freud. They wrote after he died, he was the most effective disturber of complacency of his time. David's right up there, with Noam Chomsky. [Laughs]
Well, like Viggo said, it's always easier if there's information available to you. There's a lot for both characters. You deal with the fear element - someone who has a very passionate and vocal following. You want to do justice to the character, as well as David and Christopher.
Echoing what Viggo said, the main thing for me was to tackle the very elegant, muscular dialogue. I tried to treat it as a piece of music, and spent a lot of time with the text, trying to get the rhythms, and getting a power over the dialogue. It was a period of time where discourse, particularly in the academic world, was a weapon - if you're not in charge of it, you're going to be destroyed. What's interesting when you're dealing with heavyweight, revered characters, is that you find out they're only human underneath, and have egos, and basic, obvious flaws. So to play with that was fun.
No matter how much research you do, or how good the script is, how well known the character is, in the end you're going to be adding yourself - your body, mind, feelings - to it. The challenge was his wicked sense of humour. 19th century Vienna was pretty straitlaced. Freud appreciated wordplay and wit. His favourite writers were humorous writers who got around censorship laws with jokes.
When a Cronenberg film is announced, fans expect a certain visual verve, but this is quite sparse.
I'm evolving a kind of austerity and simplicity in my style and approach to film-making. Once again, the movie tells you what it wants. The era was very controlled and the feeling that everything knew its place. You can see that by the high white collars and the corsets and stuff.
The style of the film comes to me from what we're trying to create, and we're trying to replicate an era that's gone now. Is there a gas light? What is it reflecting on? All of those things generate the style. I don't come with the idea that I have to put a stamp on it that people would recognise. The blood and soil, and Aryan spirituality was all in Jung's head, and so the landscape, the forest and orchard and Lake Zurich all were important to the movie.