A Dangerous Method -- David Cronenberg/Viggo Mortensen's latest

I see from imdb she's also playing the wife in Cosmopolis

dudes "foreign film" is code for "foreign language" film. that's why you don't see british heritage films in the foreign section at video stores.

as for the artist, it does kind of scuttle this classification scheme. which is probably one reason the weinstein's figured they could market it heavily -- it doesn't really present itself as "foreign" in the same was as even "girl w/ dragon tattoo" or whatever.

what language is it in again?

is that a joke? isn't it 95% silent -- are the few words spoken dubbed into english for the american release?

i guess what i mean by biopic-y is, not in the sense of being flabby or histrionic, but just the problem when you're doing a movie about real peoples lives - real life isnt particularly dramatized, stops and starts in weird places, etc. a lot of people have lived fascinating lives but they dont always make for good drama

Cronenberg himself hasn't written an original script in age.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 10, 2012 4:40 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*ages

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 10, 2012 4:40 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

he's always aggressive about shaping the scripts at the preproduction stage, though

and as a guy who thinks very nearly every movie made these days needs to have 20 minutes lopped off, i love crones for bein a nazi about this - but at the same time i think ADM should've been longer!

when i hear something is biopic-y, i think of a film constructed really episodically that doesn't have a clear through-line. in other words, it kind of squanders a shapely narrative in favor of a (not necessarily historically accurate) series of "representative" episodes or scènes à faire.

good examples would be coal miner's daughter (which is not a bad movie, although it starts off really strong and then gets more boring as it goes on) or control (which is a terrible movie).

i don't get the sense that ADM is biopic-y in this sense.

its not

it doesnt have any scenes that are like WHATS UP FREUD YOU WON THE BIG PSYCHIATRY AWARD

interior restaurant. freud, wearing a bib, is working on a plate of brisket while his wife sips a glass of wine. freud's erstwhile protegé, CARL JUNG, enters from the left background. he spies freud, and walks up to him.

HANS BLOOM: mr freud, i just wanted to congratulate you on having changed the way that we understand human motivation.

FREUD puts down his utensils and reaches up to wipe his mouth with a napkin.

FREUD: [clears throat] why thank you, carl jung, my erstwhile protegé. i hear you are currently working on a theory of psychotherapy that departs from my model. i am not happy about this

JUNG looks startled....

haha whoops i typed HANS BLOOM b/c i started with another scenario.

i can't even type a bad parody well.

Music cue: BAD TO THE BONE

montage that alternates between increasingly wacky therapy sessions with jung and freud

Music cue: I FEEL GOOD

that ends w/ jung and patient parachuting out of a hot-air balloon floating over vienna while freud watches through a pair of binoculars from his office window.

at the end of the montage, freud tosses the binoculars down in envy.

FREUD: damn you, jung! damn you.

Music cue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslSxYwgwlE

I've never seen Huston's Freud w/ Monty, phaps this wd fulfill yr needs

yeah that is horrible by reputation

this was a nice little movie, felt very restrained and tightly constructed for the most part. Knightly kinda overdoes it in her first few scenes imho, Cronenberg must've really egged her on to be that cartoonish. Viggo's Freud is hilarious, genuine lolz at the "that's a very protestant remark" line. Also appreciated how all the characters are so transparently self-serving (Otto Gross most of all, obviously).

also lolz @ s1ocki/amateurist re-write upthread, well done

Viggo's Freud is hilarious, genuine lolz at the "that's a very protestant remark" line.

otm.

a lot of reviews have kind of missed how funny this movie is (in that dry, cronenbergian sort of way)

kind of true for most cronenberg flicks, but yea

https://twitter.com/MaxTundra/statuses/169727818966646785

haha

ppl don't recognize any sort of comedy 'higher' than Seth Rogen

On a side note: the funny part about rewatching The Dead Zone is Christopher Walken kissing a woman.

def found myself chuckling throughout. true the comedy is dry, but it's driven by the underlying premise of a lot of comedy: deluded characters struggling under the weight of their delusions

I chuckled every time Viggo indolently gazed at Fassbender through tortoise eyelids, elongating unexpected words.

whoever said Viggo should've gotten an oscar nom over Jonah Hill was otm

Viggo def the best of the three leads here

i enjoyed this a fair bit, respected it more, found it intermittently gripping. knightley didn't bother me; in fact i thought she was good. viggo is just virtuosic. michael fassbender is a beautiful man. i liked that the film was unashamed of both its theatrical origins and its intellectual content. i probably would have been more compelled if i didn't find psychoanalysis, of the freudian or jungian bent, to be hopelessly flaky. but the interpersonal dynamics b/t the characters were fairly heady, even though just when they started to ramify i feel like the film sort of lost clarity.

for most of the movie, esp. the 1st half, i was compelled just by the beauty and efficiency of cronenberg's late style. crisp, judicious editing, no-fuss mise en scene, interesting use of the split-field diopter. a pleasure to watch, basically.

this film was really dumped by its distributor. it only played for one week here, on half a screen (= twice a day, so 14 screenings in toto).

It finally made it to multiplexes here but didn't last long. It's stint in the arthouses was longer and early. I imagine once it got snubbed by the Oscars they didn't want to spend the money to push it.

amateurist otm. Brevity is the soul of something or other in late Cronenberg.

My own reservations about Knightley's hysterics disappeared after a few minutes (I didn't know who she was until I saw the credits; I'd forgotten she was in it).

it was pretty obv by mid-December that this film was going to be ignored in the trophy wars, its only shot at a prolonged theatrical run. Anyway, look fwd to rewatching on disc. xxp

they gave him this one. Pattinson next

for most of the movie, esp. the 1st half, i was compelled just by the beauty and efficiency of cronenberg's late style. crisp, judicious editing, no-fuss mise en scene, interesting use of the split-field diopter. a pleasure to watch, basically.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, February 16, 2012 10:39 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really feeling this, and i watched eastern promises recently and felt it there too. it's just so nice to watch someone who knows what he's doing.

yeah, sometimes i'd just think, "yeah, that's exactly where he needed to cut."

what's interesting is i don't think cronenberg is a "natural" filmmaker in the sense of like godard or someone who just gets his hands (not literally) on a camera and immediately knows exactly what the fuck he's doing. his early films can be clumsy, sloppy, or just undistinguished stylistically in a way that blunts the power of the (undeniably compelling) stories and themes. but as he's moved along his stylistic palette (sp?) has gotten smaller and his decisions more and more thoughtful and just right. he's always been a restrained, un-flashy director, but his hand has just become surer and surer. i first noticed this around crash and spider (i don't like spider much, but the style is sublimely controlled).

what did people think about the digitally composited boat scenes?

i dunno, i just wanted the boat

have you ever considered the possibility that the boat is the penis?

sometimes a boat...

sometimes a boat iirc

did I mention already on this thread how much I enjoyed freud's office - amazing art direction

Why is Viggo not in Cosmopolis?

i mean he could have been the limo driver or something

i know i want these dudes to make movies together until theyre both really old

cronenberg is already pushing into oldness, but he looks good for his age (68 i think).

and yes re. art direction. the contrast b/t jung's office (and home) and freud's home was effective, i think. it rhymed with the way freud accuses of jung of being a hypocrite for proclaiming his normalcy so loudly while being as fucked up as anyone else.

i think the last third of the movie could have actually used an extra 10–15 minutes just to clarify the evolving dynamics b/t the three main characters.