A Dangerous Method (2011), David Cronenberg

***

Great concept with fabolous actors fails to fulfill it's full potential.
C.G. Jung is treating a woman with a serious emotional problems.
She likes to be spanked. Of course, an affair ensues. At the same time Jung is forming a friendship/rivalry with Sigmund Freud. Lovely ideas and debates about the basic ideal differences of psychoanalysis and man's sexual self gets lost somewhere between the spanking and beautiful shots of summerly Vienna.

Absolutely fabolous and the treat & the saving grace of the film is C.G. Jung played by Michael Fassbender. His restricted manner shows a portrait of a man with great inner turmoil. Keira Knightley as the spanking Ms. Spielrein, who by the way was to become one of the first women psychoanalysists later in Russia, is ruining the potrayal of this fisty and intelligent woman with overacting and too heavy Russian accent. Also much can be debated about the fact that Freud & Jung are portrayed as having a upper class brit accent.
Vincent Cassel makes a lovely little visit as Otto Gross, who was the early disciple of Sigmund Freud amd psychoanalytist himself. Viggo Mortensen's potrayal of Sigmund Freud reminds more like an old english fatherly business tycoon of the 21th century than an austrian psychoanalytist. 

Should David Cronenberg stick to horror isn't a valid point either, as Eastern Promises goes to show but he isn't on his best with this film either. Maybe at it's best, A Dangerous Method makes people to explore deeper to the lives and thoughts of these two mavericks of their time.

Der Himmel über Berlin (1987), Wim Wenders

****

Columbo! Nick & Cave and the Bad Seeds! Wenders has packed up this wonderful 2 hour poem about (eternal) life with magnificent cameos. This film was later raped by Hollywood in the City of Angels. But Wings of Desire (UK title) is much more than a story about an angel who fells in love with a mortal ballet dancer. In fact so much more that it leaves one speechless. Seeing is believing and sometimes it's not necessary the explain things away. This is certainly one of the cases.

L'annee derniere a Marienbad (1961), Alain Resnais

****
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054632/
















A cinematized psychoanalysis session (more blatantly so than Hiroshima, Mon Amour), pointing the camera not at the couch, but at the probed unconscious. Haunting. And often so textbook Freudian it’s not even funny. Or it is funny.

After Hiroshima and this, I think Wong Kar Wai is Resnais' somewhat less abstract successor in a way.

Antichrist (2009), Lars Von Trier

***½

Hyped up as to be the next Exorcist, the description doesn't really apply though as this movie

shows more psychological horror than anything else.

The son of a psychologist dies and the parents settle down to a cabin in the mountains to heal but everything goes wrong. Metaphoric images and occurings show the many sides of grieving and depression and the general fear of loss. Needless to say, Trier might have gone a bit too far, but this film's visually challenging cinematography justifies it. Worth-while watching despite the gore bits.

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), Jean Epstein

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018770/

****



















It does take liberties with the original story-line which do away with some of the original themes (and add new ones), but atmosphere-wise, it's hard to imagine anything but a silent, wildly expressionistic interpretation doing this one justice. Haunting and superb! (just look at that screencap) See it.

(My version had a voice-over of the intertitles in English with a French accent. Think David Suchet as Poirot, haha!)

Double Indemnity (1944), Billy Wilder

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/

**1/2


















Inner monologue so oft parodied it sounds like a parody of itself. A high-maintenance Dame with high-maintenance hair and "plans of her own". A disposable husband. A male mentor figure who is the lead's only meaningful relationship. Murky character motivations all over.

Film noir, you say? No! Movie noir :)!

And, needless to say, a fun watch.

Winter Light (1962), Ingmar Bergman

****

Can't emphasize enough how wonderful use of black and white film Bergman and his crew
were able to produce. Little rural church becomes majestetic with winter light hitting the
altar and in the middle of that, small priest struggling, once again, with the absence of god.
This is the second part of the trilogy, among Through A Glass Darkly and Silence, all
dealing with faith.

First I was bothered with the director always using the same actors (can't seem to get
away of the idea "yeah, thats the one who played that in that, he cant be a priest) but
after seeing this I see the point, the cast is just way too good and you get totally sucked
in with every character they play. Uncompromising, tough, cruel and beautiful but also
slow-paced narration gives this film it's charisma.

This is so perfect in every aspect, acting, script and especially cinematography-wise.
Four stars only for because, in my opinion, of the quite abrupt ending.