Sunday, September 23, 2012
MIND VOYAGE
Today's film was Michael Cronenberg's
drawn from letters between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, this dramatization of their relationship and the involvement of a young female patient who will become a doctor herself, is often as dry and brittle as toast and as deliciously exciting as the raunchiest scenes you could devise.
A NYTimes Critics' Pick.
They are on a voyage of the mind into the unconscious of the mind.
Jung's wife gives him a sailboat and that is the feeling that we have watching this. A voyage or adventure where there are uncharted waters.
Cronenberg does manage to bring alive certain well known ideas as the Oedipal Complex as it is illustrated by Freud and his disciple Jung. The role of sexual urge and thought in people's daily lives is explored. All in the story about these three.
Sedately and not.
It has the great line from Freud to Jung as they arrive in NYC. "Do they know we are coming?" "We are bringing the plague". And they do.
This is pretty good. I think it needs to be watched and listened to a second and third time. It certainly leaves one thinking.
Viggo Mortensen is Freud (superego) and Michael Fassbender (ego), improbably, as Jung but it works. Keira Knightley is the young patient and Sarah Gadon is Jung's wife.
There is a short appearance by an old favorite, Vincent Cassell as a rogue analyst. He shakes up the picture in a very delightful way. (The id)
I won't see it again. I liked it and I had enough for one time. A 3 out of Netflix5.
