The Iron Lady

Profiling Thatcher
Phyllida Lloyd Plays it Safe
By Cole Smithey

Between Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar Hoover biopic and director Phyllida Lloyd's ill-told life story of Margaret Thatcher, it might seem on the surface there's a concerted effort to lionize two of the Right's most reprehensible examples of absolute power corrupting absolutely. On closer inspection however, each of the films reveal latent hypocrisies in their political subjects. Both movies feature iconic performances from enormously talented actors giving their all to embody tragically flawed political figures. Meryl Streep makes somewhat more of a big-screen splash than Leonardo DiCaprio given that Margaret Thatcher was a higher profile public figure. Her every gesture and facial expression comes across with an astounding degree of authenticity, thanks in part to some terrific prosthetic assistance by the film’s highly skilled make-up department.

Phyllida Lloyd last directed Streep in the 2008 musical “Mamma Mia.” Here, she depends on a less than solid script by British playwright Abi Morgan, the same woman screenwriter responsible for 2011’s most overrated film “Shame.” Morgan shapes the backward gazing biopic from the perspective of a decrepit Thatcher suffering from severe bouts of dementia that allow for flashback reveries that frequently slip into a realm of the absurd.

Suspended within its retired subject's senile vantage point, that constantly converses with hallucinations of her deceased husband (played by Jim Broadbent in full tweet-tweet-arf-arf mode), "The Iron Lady" quietly equates Margaret Thatcher's distorted mental state with that of Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's disease. The obvious deduction is that she wasn’t entirely in charge of her mental faculties when she served as Prime Minister--aka “Britain’s Fighting Lady.” The film inadvertently gives a persuasive sense of how hated Margaret Thatcher was by British citizens, and by the IRA who repeatedly attempted to assassinate her. Protesters assail her in public, and bomb blasts follow her. Unfortunately, for fear of dipping its toe into politics, the filmmakers dodge Thatcher’s public policies. Still, an emphasis on Thatcher's heavy-handed military response in the Falklands rightly paints her as a warmonger. The film goes to great lengths to present Margaret Thatcher as a hardened woman battling for her place in a man’s world with the closet weapon at hand—stubbornness. It doesn’t however make mention of crucial aspects of her formative experiences as a research chemist or as a barrister.

It's easy to come away from the movie with an idea that Margaret Thatcher was at best a penny-wise-and-pound foolish woman guilty of turning on her own kind; she was the daughter to a family of grocers. At worst, Margaret Thatcher contributed to the world's current economic collapse with a cunning brand of daring cruelty that defies logic and reason. Not even Meryl Streep is capable of making Margaret Thatcher a likeable human being in spite of the film’s doting attention to the character’s frail human dilemma. While "The Iron Lady" doesn't give Britain’s former Prime Minister anywhere near the historical justice of Elvis Costello's contemptuous ode to the Iron Lady, "Tramp the Dirt Down," it does remind us of one of the primary contributors to the world's economic crisis. History will not be kind to Margaret Thatcher.

Rated PG-13. 105 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

We Need to Talk About Kevin

All Talk
Lynne Ramsay Can’t Commit to Horror
By Cole Smithey

Forced, stultifying, and artificial beyond belief, "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is Scottish director Lynne Ramsay's off-key treatment of Lionel Shriver's novel. Ramsay co-wrote the screenplay with brother-in-law Rory Kinnear. The story is about a bad-seed son who terrorizes his mother Eva (Tilda Swinton) from the minute he's born.

Unsure of whether it wants to be a cynical drama or a horror thriller, the poorly paced film inches through Kevin's bad behavior from infant to teenager. The only thing more reprehensible than Kevin’s unwarranted hatred of his mother is his parents’ unwillingness to straighten the kid out even as his behavior spirals out of control.

Kevin plays nice when daddy Franklin (played by a miscast John C. Reilly) is around but he has a knack for methodically pushing his mom's buttons the rest of the time. As an infant, Kevin never stops screaming, except when dad’s around. At six-years-old, Kevin trashes his mom's newly designed home office with a squirt gun filled with paint. Discipline is off the table. Instead, daddy gives Kevin a toy bow-and-arrow set reinforced by readings from Robin Hood--the only book Kevin owns. Later, Kevin will graduate to a high-powered bow, also given as a gift from pops. The teenaged Kevin is bound for disaster. However, when the much foreshadowed crisis moment finally comes, it arrives with all the force of an overflowing bathtub—not the least because it occurs off-screen.

Production designer Judy Becker’s lazy approach relegates the film’s mise en scène to an afterthought. “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a text book example of how not to design a film. Everything is bright shiny surfaces without texture or depth. Context is nowhere in sight.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” plays like a narrative negative. What the viewer sees are all the extraneous scenes between what should be shown. It’s as if the editor confused what was on the editing room floor with what should have gone into the projector.

Filmed in stagnate fly-on-the-wall compositions, the film emphasizes Tilda Swinton's inscrutable performance as a woman unable or unwilling to come to grips with her nightmare spawn. In short, Eva is the same brand of idiot as her husband and her diabolical son. There’s no one to empathize with in the story-not even Kevin’s abused younger sister who barely shows up except to be inexplicably blinded in one eye by her hateful sibling.

Some people should never be parents; some children should never be born; some novels don't deserve to be made into films. "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is a minimalist mystery with no hook. Whether there’s more to Shiver’s novel of “maternal ambivalence” is immaterial. The movie sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from a well executed art film like "Melancholia," whose characters take action in a framework of fertile social commentary. Rather, “Kevin” falls into a pejorative category with half-films such as “Martha Marcy May Marlene” or “Shame” where the abstract narrative and underdeveloped themes never connect. It’s not enough to instigate suspense. There has to be a story. Moreover there has to be character development. You won’t find any such luxuries here.

The parents of a psychopathic child don’t even bother to have the conversation the film's title suggests. Perhaps the filmmakers hope their audience will do their verbal articulation for them in circular what-if conversations. Sadly, there isn't much to say about Kevin except that he wasn't properly disciplined as a child and so he went all Columbine without going so far as to take his own life. A year ago Mumblecore was the dumbest film movement around. Now dumb is the province of a minimalist subgenre that has yet to be named. Perhaps we should call it the “Shame on Martha and Kevin” movement. Let’s just hope it stops here. Film audiences should be so lucky.

Rated R. 112 mins. (D) (One Star - out of five/no halves)

Once Upon a Time In Anatolia

Nuri Bilge Ceylon Investigates
The Impurity of Human Motivation
By Cole Smithey

Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylon continues his minimalist yet universal exploration of society (in the meta sense of the word) with a fascinating police procedural that values story over plot and character over prejudice. The mastermind behind such instant classics as "Climates" (2006) and "Three Monkeys" (2008) uses every shaded detail of time, atmosphere, human condition, and verbal and non-verbal communication to tell a quietly complex story about a murder investigation and the imperfect methods of the men assigned to solve the crime.

Ceylon is one of the world’s few truly gifted filmmakers capable of using film as a broad yet clearly defined canvas for meting out staccato and legato pulses of narrative text and subtext. Patience is a key ingredient to his art. There are always multiple layers of crucial information seeping from the screen. His patience for storytelling matches Michelangelo Antonioni, whose films Ceylon must surly have studied.

“Once Upon a Time In Anatolia” is about the nature of human motivation, and how it folds back upon itself under the microscope of external pressures—whether from co-workers or from a natural flow of events. As in all Ceylon's films clouds play an important role in the landscape. There is nothing showy about Ceylon’s unique brand of cinema. Here is a filmmaker who creates a bond of trust with his audience, who are invited to interact with his films.

Ceylon’s regular cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki supplies visually intriguing compositions that tempt the viewer to study the story’s dichotomy of rural and industrial landscape. You have the sense of being allowed to see every aspect of the story. Nothing seems to be hidden. The delicacy with which Tiryaki’s camera slowly zooms is a thing of precise beauty.

At night Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) accompanies a group of police officers and a soldier as they drive around the dark outskirts of the Anatolian steppe. The group has with them two incarcerated suspects they hope will lead them to the grave of a missing man. Every distance is remote. Only car headlights cut through the blackness. The young doctor strikes up a friendship with the local prosecuting attorney. Surely justice will prevail. If the body is found, Doctor Cemal will perform the autopsy.

Police Commissar Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) lets his temper flare at the uncooperative prisoner who leads the three-vehicle caravan on a wild goose chase in search of a "round tree" by one of the road's many fountains that provide water for travelers in the dark arid region. Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel) reigns in Naci when the Commissar turns violent against the prisoner—not because he cares particularly about the prisoner, but because he understands the demands of the job. The cops joke about food and engage in a bland kind of non-specific repartee that diffuses tension even as it subtlety discloses fragments of personal information. Every character and theme line rings with authenticity. The time-consuming search takes its toll.

The men stop for food in the middle of the night at the home of man whose beautiful daughter momentarily entrances them. The respect her devastating beauty, yet know exactly how her life will unfold. All life is a cycle. Part of their job is to recognize patterns, even the ones that shame them about their own personal lives.

The story is about how detectives communicate. It’s also about how entrusted public servants wrangle with overpowering emotions and personal secrets. Anger and sadness are traits to be submersed under rote routines of professional conduct. Their personal sense of justice can be confused and arbitrary. And yet, these men are doing a job that must be done.

Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a lover of humanity. His great concern for every one of his characters goes beyond their innocence or guilt. He recognizes the balance of both qualities in their actions. As a sociological study, the film is edifying. As a drama, it is at turns enigmatic, revealing, and moving. The cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylon is a transformative one. It is unique and honest. Most significantly, it offers a rare experience to be treasured.

Not Rated. 151 mins. (A-) (Four Stars - out of five/no halves)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

A Remake by Any Other Name
David Fincher Takes One for the Team
By Cole Smithey

David Fincher can do a great re-make. Now, let’s hope he never does one again. By definition, remakes demand that audiences go back to the original to compare differences slight and large. I don’t put any credence in the faulty premise that a second film based on the same source material constitutes anything other than a remake. Indeed many of the compositions and sequences are similar enough between director Niels Arden Oplev’s version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and Fincher’s that watching both is akin comparing apples with apples. Still, the significant difference between the two films is a big one. In Fincher’s version Lisbeth and Mikael Blomkvist get busy, and as such earn a level of intimacy sorely missing from Arden Oplev’s sill powerful film.

Audiences will split hairs over Noomi Rapace’s iconic Goth portrayal of Lisbeth Salander as compared to Rooney Mara’s savant-sex-alien rendition. It’s a fascinating comparison. Rapace kicked bat-shit-monkey-ass in the original, while Mara’s Lisbeth is more the type to ask permission before seeking lethal revenge—as occurs in a pivotal scene late in the film. Mara approaches a bland quality of androgyny whose asexual appearance is belied by her lustful intentions which she carries out with respectable focus.

There’s no question that David Fincher is a muscular director whose capacity for creating cinematic wonder is astounding. “Zodiac” (2007) is one of the most stunning police procedurals ever made. He understands the importance of seducing his audience right from the start of every one of his movies. His opening credit sequence here explodes with a shiny, oily-black sensual fury that announces the movie as an exploration in thoroughly modern style and sass. And to that end he succeeds full stop. Where he slips up is, surprisingly, in articulating Stieg Larsson’s story—something that Niels Arden Oplev did better. Some of the blame can be put on screenwriter Steven Zaillian, but editing decisions by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall play a hefty role. You don’t care as much about the mystery of the missing girl as you do with the original film because the narrative isn’t enunciated with the same degree of passion.

Even the seemingly ideal casting of Daniel Craig doesn’t work as well for the role. With his downtrodden bearing and doughy charm Michael Nyqvist made for a more empathetic Mikael Blomkvist. Although the filmmakers wisely keep the action in Sweden, rather than transposing the story to somewhere like the Hamptons, the film refuses to soak up the European culture it’s submersed in. Here again miscasting plays a part. Robin Wright just isn’t convincing as a Swedish character. Her accent evaporates mid-sentence. In spite of her blonde hair and Nordic features, Wright feels like an interloper in the movie. An utter lack of romantic chemistry between her and Daniel Craig further distracts from the story.

David Fincher’s “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a very entertaining movie. The credit sequence alone is worth the price of admission. Is it better than Niels Arden Oplev’s film? I’ll leave that up to you.

Rated R. 166 mins. (B+) (Four Stars - out of five/no halves)

We Bought a Zoo

Crowd-Pleaser
Cameron Crowe Does the Thing He Does
By Cole Smithey

Cameron Crowe casts a heart-warming cinematic spell that will milk many a tear from its widespread target audience. However calculated to meet the demands of family-friendly holiday movie fare, "We Bought a Zoo" does everything it sets out to achieve. Some supporting characters, such as Patrick Fugit's zoo-keeper Robin Jones, get short shrift but it's all in the interest of keeping the potentially overpopulated story moving toward its intended goal of family unity.

Matt Damon is likeable as ever as Benjamin Mee, a father of two attempting to reinvent his family after the recent loss of his wife. Benjamin's 13-year-old son Dylan (Colin Ford) is acting out at school. Dylan draws disturbingly violent pictures of things like decapitations and weird monsters. He’s been caught stealing. Seven-year-old Rosie (played wonderfully by the scene-stealing Maggie Elizabeth Jones) is emotionally better equipped to deal with the shifting reality around her. It goes without saying that, against conventional wisdom, Benjamin quits his job and purchases a rundown zoo as a way to reestablish a nurturing home environment for himself and his kids.

The run-down rural facility's 40-odd endangered animals face the threat of being put to sleep unless Benjamin can make the necessary renovations for the zoo to pass inspection. John Michael Higgins adds comic appeal as Walter Ferris, a quirky zoo inspector widely disliked by the staff Benjamin inherits when he purchases the property. Scarlett Johansson coasts through her role a zookeeper Kelly Foster, a dedicated young woman whose undeniable beauty causes simmering romantic tension with Benjamin. Indeed, romantic suspense is one of the film's trump cards. The anti-social Dylan tries to avoid the noticeable chemistry he shares with the zoo's youngest assistant Lilly (Elle Fanning). His failing attempts at skirting love's arrows give the movie a youthful sense of nostalgia that runs parallel to its idyllic sense of wonder regarding wild animals.

You never believe for a moment that Thomas Haden Church's playful character Duncan could be Matt Damon’s sibling. Yet you wouldn't want it any other way. Haden Church adds just the right amount of brotherly support to give the story the essential familial lift it needs. It doesn't hurt that he delivers every line with an infectious dose of good-humored intentionality. You can't help but love Damon and Haden Church as brothers even if they don’t share a single physical trait in common.

As with all of Cameron Crowe's films music plays an important part. Although the film slips into music video sequences from time to time it's difficult to challenge the director's pitch-perfect ability for matching perfectly contrasting yet complimenting pieces of rock music to the tone of the action at hand. Aside from songs from Tom Petty and Bob Dylan, Crowe tapped Icelandic singer/songwriter Jónsi from the rock band Sigur Rós to compose original music for the score. The formula works like a charm.

Without having even seen “We Bought a Zoo,” New Yorker magazine film critic David Denby famously slagged Cameron Crowe’s movie in emails to producer Scott Rudin regarding Denby’s faceplant decision to break a film review embargo on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Such kneejerk critical reaction to solid holiday entertainment as “We Bought a Zoo” speaks volumes about corporate media’s attitudes that Hollywood is left to questionably interpret. As if there wasn’t already a dearth of G and PG-rated films, Denby’s malicious remarks reflect a damaging ideology of cultural condescension.

“We Bought a Zoo” never pays quite enough attention to the incarcerated wild animals we hear so much about throughout the story. The predictable climax comes across like so much melted peanut butter. Still, the movie wins in its ability create a glow of giddy movie pleasure that audiences crave. If that means you’ll tear up more over this movie than “War Horse,” well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Rated PG. 131 mins. (B) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

Young Adult

Generation Z is Doomed: 
Reitman & Cody Do Their Version of Mumblecore
By Cole Smithey

Cracks show in Jason Reitman's first revisit with screenwriter Diablo Cody since their out-of-the-ballpark comedy "Juno" back in 2007. Reitman's signature bland approach to pseudo-comedy (see "Up in the Air") struggles to get traction with a story of stunted maturity that teeters on the brink of despicability. Cody's signature penchant for snarky dialogue (hear lines like "psychotic prom queen bitch") don't roll off the tongue nearly as spritely as they did from Ellen Page's character in "Juno." The story's overburdened theme that you can never go back to your hometown doesn't provide the wealth of comic possibilities the filmmakers imagine.

Former high school beauty queen Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) works as a ghost writer for a Young Adult book series that's on the way out. She lives a lonely life holed up in her messy Minneapolis high-rise apartment where she picks at the bones of her faded youth while ignoring deadlines. The 40-year-old basket case divorcee has a bald spot from compulsively pulling hairs from her scalp. She's still got her looks, but nor for much longer. An emailed baby photo of the newborn child of her ex-boyfriend of 20 years Buddy (Patrick Wilson) incites Mavis to pack up her little dog and go on a road trip to her crumby hometown of Mercury, Minnesota. Mavis is on a mission to steal Buddy away from his wife—forget about the baby. Theron turns herself into a reverse Stepford wife mechanically repeating romantic moves her character made decades ago. She's an anti-heroine for manic depressive women the world over. It's impossible to feel empathetic for Mavis because her nostalgic fetishism is so insanely shallow.

Steady rounds of booze accompany our unreliable protagonist’s descent into delusional psychosis. A chance bar meet-up with high school locker-neighbor Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) provides some much needed lift to the movie. Oswalt gives a stand-out performance that redeems the film whenever he’s onscreen. Matt wisely advises Mavis against perusing her doomed plan of romantic recognizance. Therapy seems a better course of action. Matt’s crutch-walking status as the survivor of a gay-bashing attack that nearly killed him in high school marks him as an object of pity. He nonetheless manages to live a moderately satisfied life home brewing whisky and working as a restaurant accountant.

After a climax of public humiliation where Mavis gets significantly less justice than she deserves, she has a chat with Matt’s sister. The woman goes to great lengths to support Mavis’s condescending opinion of the locals. She pumps up Mavis as a feminist icon she frequently dreams about. The uncomfortable scene essentially reneges on the film’s promised catharsis. Perhaps Matt’s sister is just as stupid as Mavis believes everyone in the town of Mercury is.

“Young Adult” never finds its pitch of sardonic satire. You can feel the filmmakers and actors searching for it, but the narrative never gels. There are a few chuckles but a condescending through-line tilts toward vapid meanness for its own sake. Still, see the film for Patton Oswalt’s great performance. Sadly, it’s the only thing the movie has going for it.

Rated R. 94 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five/no halves)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Cold War Spies
John le Carré's Novel Goes Full Tilt
By Cole Smithey

International espionage during the Cold War period of the early ‘70s, as practiced by British MI6 double agents, is one very icy dish. Director Tomas Alfredson ("Let ther Right One In") peels back myriad shades of atmospheric gray that contribute thoroughly to his spook characters' consciously modulated mannerisms. The result is a spot-on adaptation of John le Carré's famous 1974 novel. Husband-and-wife screenwriters Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor execute the finest novel-to-film adaptation you could imagine. Crisscross strains of Bertolucci's "The Conformist" flow through cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema’s stark compositional choices. Composer Alberto Iglesias contributes to the film’s tense mood with musical motifs that push and pull at the seething drama onscreen.

John Hurt delivers a prehensile performance as Control, the head of Britain’s CIA equivalent, before a failed mission costs him his job. Control orders MI6 field spy Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) on a Black Ops mission to Budapest to arrange for the defection of a Hungarian general with knowledge about the identity of an MI6 mole who has been passing off secrets to the Russians. Skullduggery hangs thick in the Eastern European air. Their quiet meeting at an outdoor café is interrupted by a sickening bit of suspenseful violence that occurs with sloppy fury. Far removed from the glossy action of a James Bond movie, cold blooded death comes as an occupational hazard. No agent is immune regardless of his depth of experience. A mole in the upper echelon of MI6 is surely to blame. Uncovering his identity makes up the narrative meat of the film.

As the mystery unfolds, sharply constructed flashback sequences bring the secret inner lives of each involved spy into focus.

The film’s nursery rhyme-informed title refers to the codenames of the suspected British spies who call their London headquarters by its alternate title, the Circus. Irony drips from the word since nothing about the industrial building with its harsh florescent lights or soundproof conference room displays any sense of humor.

Gary Oldman’s implacable “Beggarman” George Smiley is Control’s former right-hand man called out of retirement to uncover the traitor among the group. The mole has been giving away carefully-guarded secrets for so long that it calls into question the value the entire MI6 agency. Toby Jones plays the “Tinker” Percy Alleline to Colin Firth’s well spoken “Tailor” Bill Haydon. Ciarán Hinds brings his stoic nature to bear as Roy Bland, the “Soldier” of the group. Tom Hardy turns in an emotionally moving portrayal as Ricki Tarr, a love-blinded spy gone rogue. You couldn’t hope for a better ensemble of actors. There’s no such thing as a throwaway scene in the entire film. Here’s a film to sit back and savor every moment.

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is more than a character study. It is an examination of a highly skilled occupation that demands such complete and utter commitment that all emotional response must be submerged to a point of permanent poker-faced resolve. No one can be trusted and yet loyalty to the group is mandatory. A company Christmas party where the agents pretend to let their hair down momentarily arrives as a key repeated sequence for what it says about the way British spies of the period interacted. Every jovial smile conceals suspicion and secrets. Tomas Alfredson’s flawless staging provides a fly-on-the-wall view that allows the audience to peek behind the characters’ well-defended shroud of secrecy to discover yet another one that hides beneath. The story is about how loyalty and integrity are enforced in a spy agency where such values add up to much more than a simple matter of life and death. They represent the safety and viability of an entire system of government.

Rated R. 128 mins. (A) (Five Stars - out of five/no halves)

A Dangerous Method

Freud, Jung, and Spielrein
Cronenberg Explores Madness Behind the Method of Modern Psychotherapy
By Cole Smithey

Christopher Hampton's stage play "The Talking Cure" provides the cerebral basis for David Cronenberg to dive into the largely overlooked story of Sabina Spielrein and her influence on the fathers of modern psychoanalysis--Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Sabina (played with astonishing authority by Keira Knightley) is a Russian Jewish mental patient brought to Jung's Burgholzli Clinic in Zurich in 1904. Sabina’s "hysteria" impedes her speech as she contorts her face, neck, and head in violent spasms. Outwardly, she seems obviously quite insane. Michael Fassbender's Jung is able to calmly look beyond Sabina's off-putting physical demeanor in the interest of curing her. Jung is determined to use Sabina as a premier test patient for Freud's revolutionary conversational therapy which he mistakenly calls "psychanalysis."

Cronenberg’s film glides effortlessly across years as Jung meets Freud (Viggo Mortensen) to discuss psychoanalysis and enjoin in a friendship fraught with lurking tension. The filmmaker masterfully controls the soundscape to underpin shifts of physical, emotional, and intellectual import. Howard Shore's delicate music is never allowed to intrude on a scene. Ugliness becomes beautiful; beauty becomes divine.
Jung and Freud share a special bond of academic endeavor exposed by their candid conversations about dreams. Jung shares his nighttime reveries for Freud to openly dissect. Freud knowingly holds the upper hand over his interpretive apprentice. Jung privately questions Freud’s insistence that sex is the crucial element to all mental dysfunction, even though his own experience with rehabilitating Sabina points to just such a conclusion. His refusal to fall in line with Freud’s strident approach puts a wedge in their relationship enabled by the patient they are fated to share.

Jung assists the perceptive and unguarded Sabina in her pursuit to become a psychoanalyst in spite of her debilitating behaviors that include an obsession with masturbation. Through Freud’s cat’s-paw influence Jung enters into an adulterous BDSM affair with Sabina after visiting one of Freud’s patients, a fellow psychiatrist named Otto Gross (exuberantly played by Vincent Cassel). Gross dismisses all social limitations in favor of a purely hedonistic lifestyle that includes a steady diet of sexual activity with staff and patients at the lush Vienna psychiatric facility whose walls only temporally contain him. The nihilistic Gross supplies Jung with all the selfish rationalization he requires to ignore his wife Emma (Sarah Gordon) and children in favor of the heretofore virginal Sabina.

“A Dangerous Method” is a fertile character study and history lesson that tenaciously explores the personal conflicts of ego and id between Jung and Freud. The film also pays generous homage to the woman whose outré sexual desires enabled her to turn Freud’s theories around. Freud went so far as to entrust Sabina with several of his patients for her to treat. As an actors’ showcase, the film is stunning. David Cronenberg has matured into a director of immeasurable confidence and gracefulness. He maintains his trademark fearlessness toward sexual obsessions and their potentially cataclysmic effects. Like Otto Gross he is incapable of “passing by an oasis without stopping to drink.”

Rated R. 99 mins. (A) (Five Stars - out of five/no halves)