Film REVIEWS
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER A DANGEROUS METHOD (15) 99min ●●●●●
David Cronenberg’s new film is a change of pace for the seldom gore-shy director of The Fly and A History of Violence, being a talky period drama about the birth of psychoanalysis in the early 20th Century. But while the body-horror auteur’s traditionally extreme visuals are absent, his ability to create a sense of broiling unease is palpably present, ensuring what could have been a dry history lesson is in fact a strangely gripping intellectual thriller.
What Cronenberg and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (adapting from his own play, The Talking Cure) offer here is a rigorous dramatic investigation of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, seen through the prism of the relationship between the fledgling discipline’s two main proponents, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and his protégé Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). It makes for a fascinating and imaginative insight into a moment in history when the world of thought, and the way that we think about ourselves, was being fundamentally reshaped.
The film begins at fever pitch as hysterical patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) is manhandled into Jung’s Zurich hospital. The story then follows Jung as he successfully treats Spielrein using Freud’s controversial principles, but then begins to question his theories as he is drawn into a transgressive affair with her. Fassbender bears the bulk of the film’s dramatic weight, and thoroughly convinces as the dispassionate analyst, only too keen to use his own life as a testing ground for scientific breakthrough. Mortensen is equally effective as Freud, playing him with a humourous charm that conceals an unsettling lack of humanity. While some audiences may struggle to warm to A Dangerous Method’s largely cerebral pleasures, those keen to delve into the darker recesses of the human mind couldn’t wish for a more capable guide than Cronenberg. (Paul Gallagher) ■ Selected release from Fri 10 Feb.
RAMPART (15) 108min ●●●●●
Director Oren Moverman guided Woody Harrelson to an Oscar nomination with 2009’s The Messenger. Their latest collaboration, Rampart, shows the actor on similarly searing form. Set in 1999, Harrelson plays Dave Brown, a racist, bigoted cop in the Rampart division of the Los Angeles police force, whose life spirals out of control when he’s caught on video brutally beating a suspect.
Penned by L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy, Rampart isn’t quite what you’d expect. The real-life ‘Rampart’ scandal saw 70 LAPD officers implicated for misconduct. Yet this is no Serpico-style exposé, focusing instead on one man’s private/public disintegration. The philandering Brown’s domestic arrangements just add to the intrigue; he lives with two sisters (Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon), who have each sired him a daughter. Featuring stunning support (Ben Foster as a meth
head; Robin Wright as a lawyer-lover), Rampart never quite exceeds the sum of its admittedly impressive parts. The wider picture remains fuzzy, perhaps because Harrelson’s virtuoso performance is really all that’s there. Compelling certainly, but could’ve been ever better. (James Mottram) ■ Selected release from Fri 24 Feb.
68 THE LIST 2 Feb–1 Mar 2012
FAMILY RED DOG (PG) 92min ●●●●● RELIGIOUS DRAMA HADEWIJCH (tbc) 105min ●●●●●
2012 is turning into the year of the dog for cinema fans. After Uggie stole the show in The Artist, now comes this wonderful tale of canine tomfoolery. Told in a zippy boy’s own adventure style, this ‘inspired by a true story’ tale is based on the novel by Captain Corelli’s Mandolin author Louis de Bernières. Josh Lucas excels as an American drifter who
arrives into the Australian mining town of Dampler in 1971, takes a job as a bus driver and is chosen by rebellious mutt Red Dog to be his master. The tale is recounted by a salt-of-the-earth publican (Noah Taylor) who naturally knows all the secrets of all of the town’s characters, from beautiful secretary Nancy (Rachel Taylor) to a cantankerous dog-hating caravan owner and his cat. An endearing, funny and idiosyncratic tale, director Kriv Stender’s film is made up of a series of hilarious and tearjerking scenes of human folly. This is a rare breed – a dog’s tale that will make more than animal lovers happy. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ General release from Fri 24 Feb; also screening at Cineworld Renfrew Street, Glasgow, Fri 17–Sat 18 Feb, as part of Glasgow Film Festival.
It’s taken a couple of years for this provocative examination of contemporary religious martyrdom to gain release in the UK – but don’t be put off by that fact. The film, which explores how extreme faith can inspire acts of violence, is a typically stark drama from French writer-director Bruno Dumont (L’Humanité, Flanders), who defiantly continues to plough his Bressonian furrow in the fields of art- house cinema. Named after a 13th century European female
mystic, Hadewijch follows a 20-year-old Catholic virgin and theology student Céline (Julie Sokolowski), who is removed from a Belgian convent by her mother superior when her piety reaches excessive and worrying levels. Still devoutly in love with Christ, this daughter of a cabinet minister encounters a volatile Muslim teenager Yassine (Yassine Salim) in Paris, whose older brother Nassir (Karl Sarafidis) is a man of fundamentalist Islamic convictions. The pallid, opaque Sokolowski is a real discovery, and this mysterious, elliptical film patiently builds to its climactic act of rain-drenched salvation. (Tom Dawson) ■ Selected release from Fri 17 Feb.