Keira Knightley is just painful to watch.
Seriously painful. Cringe-worthy. That accent was atrocious and her general performance ruined everything for me. I couldn't even finish watching the movie, ugh.
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If you read the trivias about the movie, you can read that Cronenberg told her to do that with her chin..
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There is a reason -- in fact there are a couple -- that KK is so hard to watch.
First, it's approximately realistic, though toned down a bit (early films of hysterics are around, as are stills. Some folks have commented on seeing the videos on YouTube, though I haven't looked for them. I recall a few stills from my college days, in history of psychology, and written descriptions). People these days are not accustomed to seeing full-blown hysteria, which has more or less disappeared as a mental illness and whose precursors usually don't go untreated for long -- medication will control them, and young women (at least in Western cultures) are no longer prone to them.
Secondly, we aren't accustomed to seeing a beautiful young actor make herself deliberately grotesque in the service of art. Luckily KK and her director agreed that she should do so. In fact, DC said, she was willing to go further than he wanted, and they had to work together to tone her performance down.
Thirdly, it's a David Cronenberg film. He has always delighted in showing audiences some of the lengths to which the human personality can drive behavior. Along with questions of identity -- and of course we have one of those here, in Sabina -- it's one of his primary themes, as anyone even a bit familiar with his work will know.
So painful to watch, yes. doesn't detract from its quality. I don't recall DC's ever saying that people should go to his films as they might go to Merchant-Ivory films, for their beauty.
I can't help but laugh.. KK IS grotesque and the part where you say KK held back.. why am I not surprised..
shareHonestly, I thought her stalk-worthy before this. Never again. More anorexic than anything :/
Besides that, her performance her was indeed truly horrible. Mixed bag of goods, more in place ina a horror movie where you need to act like youre possessed.
And she committed the cardinal sin of speaking English in her Brit accent near the start, amateur mistake. Complete misfit, complete bumbling idiot.
Only Freud impressed me, but Otto Gross had merit too. Cassell is always true to his character
The films Herr Direktor hasn't done justice. He bumbles along, jolting from point to disconnected point. Heck, even the title 'A Dangerous Method' is not explained fully.
6/10
that opening scene was really annoying but the movie got better afterwards!
shareTHAT is what I was about to say. The OP makes me think of how I felt the first 10 minutes, especially if I decided to give up on it.
I liked the rest of the movie, and her acting. In fact, I have more respect for her than I used to.
"Honestly, I thought her stalk-worthy before this. Never again. More anorexic than anything.
Besides that, her performance her was indeed truly horrible. Mixed bag of goods, more in place ina a horror movie where you need to act like youre possessed."
ibnalmauser, I couldn't agree more! Not to mention her now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't accent. She did a pretty good job at a Russian accent. If she could only maintain it. {:-/
"...don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever."
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No, I think her performance is hard to watch mainly because you're very aware of the fact that you're watching Keira Knightly play dress up as a mentally unstable Russian Jew. It's partly the fact that she's such a familiar face that makes her performance hard to believe. The other part of it is that while she did a good job, it's not a great job. Her performance was alright and you could tell she was giving it her all, but at the end of the day, it was more a mimic of a performance than a true transformation. See through is what I'd call it. Commendable but not the stuff of true art.
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I agree with this too. At 20 minutes in I still couldn't suspend my disbelief.
If your disposition is enmity, respond to someone else.
> No, I think her performance is hard to watch mainly because you're very aware of the fact that you're watching Keira Knightly play dress up as a mentally unstable Russian Jew.
That's a good point. But whatever the reason, she ruined the film. Maybe the cast the entirely wrong person. It doesn't matter at this point. The movie was horrible.
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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?
I agree. On other sections of this board, there are comments about her as positive as these are negative.
I thought she was marvelous. I was riveted by the realism of her opening portrayal of mania, her difficult analysis revelations, and the sadomasochism. Maybe the negative reactions here are from people who aren't familiar with psychopathology and psychiatry, or who are uncomfortable with it.
She has shown great breadth in her acting. She does an imperious English femme fatale perfectly, but also a criminal sociopath in "Domino," a murderous woad warrior in "KIng Arthur," and a very complex, brilliant, and troubled woman, here.
I agree. This was Knightley's best performance, I've seen. Cronenberg has pulled some remarkable performances from his actors over his career (Woods in "Videodrome", for instance locked Woods as one of my favorite actors, for years after).
I was disturbed by Knightley's performance in my first viewing, feeling that she was over-performing, but, like many of Cronenberg's films, the entire mood and performance within his film continued to gnaw at my resistance. I went for a second viewing and found all the performances incredibly nuanced and developed along with the story and rising conflicts between the characters. By the end of the second viewing, I was very impressed with the quality of Cronenberg's detail and the accuracy of the period details and history. I immediately watched the film, again, with his commentary, on the DVD. This was almost as enjoyable as the second viewing: a fascinating history of two great intellects and their relationship with, for me, previously unknown influences of Otto Gross and Sabina Spreilrein.
As much as I enjoyed and admired Cronenberg's use of metaphor in his science-fiction work, making him one of the giant's of the genre, I think I prefer the subtlety of his most recent work, based on more realistic themes or history. The care and detail of "Dangerous Method" and the performances of his troupe make this my favorite Cronenberg film and the best film I've seen in quite a while.
KK, to me, is always hard to watch and a lot of the reason is her mouth is always a character in her movies. Don't know whether it's simply her "trout pout" or something more, but she always holds her mouth awkwardly. It's quite distracting as well as annoying.
For the person above who said to read the trivia and that it says that Cronenberg told her to do the chin jutting out thing, it actually doesn't say that. It only says that they agreed on a "face". So I still say that it is a disturbing quality of hers, the "mouth" thing. She obviously believes she is more attractive than others of us do.
Whether the director told her to act like that or not, she overacted to such an extent I thought once that she was going to bite off Jung's head with that huge mouth of hers!
She chewed the scenery so consistently that the other actors were almost insignificant. Luckily they were in alot of scenes without her so she could not spoil the entire film, which I thought was worth watching.
I agree samantha3.
I felt that KK depicted an hysterical woman very well - I was convinced. I watched the film without analysing actors/acting and found it to be a marvellous film. On the subject of acting, however, I believe Keira Knightley's performance to be brilliant. The progression from hysterical to functioning well was seen as treatment and cognitive therapy continued.
It was painful to watch KK become 'grotesque' because generally we don't like anything/one who is different, they are a threat to our idea notion of survival.
The only excited, hysterical, grotesque and lively person in the film was KK and no doubt that is how it was meant to be, to portray the great divide between the mentally ill and the apparently 'normal. I suppose it all depends on the viewers' emotions - I have inherent sympathy and compassion for the grotesque.
I picked this film to watch purely by the title and what a stunning surprise I had to realise it was about the relationship between Sigmund and Freud.
I have so much respect for KK as an actress after watching the film, whereas before, I had no opinion of her.
So?....
If every animal had wings the sh*t of this world would be evenly spread
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Her forehead bothered me a lot more.
I agree. I laughed, and when she jut out that chin my jaw dropped. That chin!
Maybe this film would have been better with a different actress. ??
Yes, it would've been much improved with the likes of Samantha Morton, Emily Mortimer, even Jessica Chastain or Amy Adams. I think that Cronenberg and the producers got "pushed" into Knightly for publicity and financing reasons.
shareI agree. Fassbender and Viggo put in very strong performances but I felt that Knightley was horrendously scene-chewing (literally) in the opening scenes. Honestly I think Keira *can be* beautiful but she does have a tendency to be an ugly talker as she juts out her chin and clenches her teeth when she is delivering dialogue -- I wish she would have worked on correcting this when she started acting years ago as it has always been very noticeable. That hideous chin-thrusting was just dreadful; it made Keira look grotesque, and not in some compelling "acting" manner, and plunged the film immediately into cartoonish melodrama. And it ruins what should have been a much more compelling film! I was thrilled by the idea of a film about Freud and Jung and their complex relationship, and this film was so very disappointing.
"It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?" Blade Runner (1982)