INTERVIEW: David Cronenberg Takes on Sigmund Freud & Talks Viggo Mortensen Into Playing Him
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- Last Updated: Tuesday, 12 November 2013 06:52
- Written by Fernando Esquivel
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David Cronenberg's, A DANGEROUS METHOD is not his first film dealing with a patient/psychiatrist relationship. His first film ever made was a short film titled Transfer about a patient and his psychiatrist. Cronenberg admits to knowing more about Freud then Jung.
"We've all been influenced by Freud. You can't grow up in the 20th century with out his influence."
When it came to casting Freud, Cronenberg thought he needed a not so obvious interpretation. , "It's not the Freud that most people think they know. He was a 50 year old very charismatic, very dynamic, leader of a very set of intense people". Although he felt confident that Viggo Mortensen could pull it off he had some convincing to do. "I basically had to talk him into it. When I discussed with him what kind of Freud it was then he eventually came around." Once Viggo was on board he decided to give him a beard, a new nose and brown eyes."The film originally started off as a screenplay commissioned by Julia Roberts. She was going to play the lead under the title of Sabina. When that film didn't happen, screenwriter Christopher Hampton turned it into a play. Cronenberg decided to make it into a film once again, but this time focusing on the relationship between an analyst and a patient. He feels that still has resonance for people today. Michael Fassbender who plays Carl Jung in A DANGEROUS METHOD, feels doctors are portrayed as sexy characters.
"That's why there are so many TV shows about doctors because they have the power to save lives. There is something very attractive about that".
According to Cronenberg, Freud, Jung, and Sabina were their own first subjects. They invented psychoanalysis. The relationship between a patient and an analyst was a brand new relationship. They were experimenting with it, according to the DANGEROUS METHOD DIRECTOR. They didn't know what the boundaries were yet.
Cronenberg also read the letters between Freud and Jung and thought them to feel totally modern.
"Here were two professional men who were highly respected and in conservative professions writing to each other about bodily fluids and erotic dreams and things that men of that time would never ever speak of especially to other men."Sabina was not only the patient but served as the female voice who spoke of her erotic nature at the same level of these men. This relationship obviously crossed modern day boundaries and served as a future template. Cronenberg was not only drawn to this relationship because of it's complexity but also felt that it was unheard for a woman to be so aggressive in her time. He calls the character "unprecedented."
A DANGEROUS METHOD opens in New York and Los Angeles on November 23rd. The release goes wider December 16, 2011.
