...I am so happy I finally saw David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method" tonight. I've been waiting to see this film since the Toronto Film Festival last September. ( seems like it was the first film to sell out )
The casting was great, especially Keira Knightley. I haven't been the biggest fan of her work in the past, but she completely breathed life in to her portrayal of Sabina Spielrein.
It's definitely not Cronenberg's best work, but I am never bored when I'm watching his films. Overall I found his portrayal of these historical figures ( Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sabina Spielrein ) to be a little too neat and generic, where I would imagine in their real lives these people were extremely complicated and quirky in lots of ways, unfortunately very little of this is visible in Cronenberg's film.
From a technical perspective, I found that many shots had that "fairy tale" window light that looks very beautiful to the eye, but doesn't occur very often in real life. I had the same problem with this style of imaginary window light in Terrence Malick' s "The Tree of Life", where even a boy's bedroom that is supposed to be lit by a small table light at night, but has that magical broad window light look to it. Very pretty to look at, but makes no sense in terms of reality. ( Ok maybe Clint Eastwood's "A Pale Rider" and "The Unforgiven" go a little too far in the "only natural light" on the set technique, but there's got to be something in between )
Lastly... The 3D work on the "ship to America" scene seems a little haphazard. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. ( I guess you need a James Cameron size budget to believably pull these type of effects off )
Overall it's very entertaining to see Cronenberg do his version of a Merchant Ivory film. I will definitely buy this on Blu-ray when it comes out. It was worth the wait.
The casting was great, especially Keira Knightley. I haven't been the biggest fan of her work in the past, but she completely breathed life in to her portrayal of Sabina Spielrein.
It's definitely not Cronenberg's best work, but I am never bored when I'm watching his films. Overall I found his portrayal of these historical figures ( Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sabina Spielrein ) to be a little too neat and generic, where I would imagine in their real lives these people were extremely complicated and quirky in lots of ways, unfortunately very little of this is visible in Cronenberg's film.
From a technical perspective, I found that many shots had that "fairy tale" window light that looks very beautiful to the eye, but doesn't occur very often in real life. I had the same problem with this style of imaginary window light in Terrence Malick' s "The Tree of Life", where even a boy's bedroom that is supposed to be lit by a small table light at night, but has that magical broad window light look to it. Very pretty to look at, but makes no sense in terms of reality. ( Ok maybe Clint Eastwood's "A Pale Rider" and "The Unforgiven" go a little too far in the "only natural light" on the set technique, but there's got to be something in between )
Lastly... The 3D work on the "ship to America" scene seems a little haphazard. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. ( I guess you need a James Cameron size budget to believably pull these type of effects off )
Overall it's very entertaining to see Cronenberg do his version of a Merchant Ivory film. I will definitely buy this on Blu-ray when it comes out. It was worth the wait.
