Albert Nobbs and Dangerous Method are alright. I wouldn’t ask for my money back or
anything because I love going to the movies (and this particular theatre has
beer, so there you go). But, I
didn’t leave feeling like the movie itself was worth the price of a ticket and
90 to 180 minutes of my life. Are
OK movies by definition a failure (at least in terms of artistic quality or
worth-seeingness (I don’t care about boxoffice))? I think so.
Movies are magic, and you can’t have second-rate magic. I’d rather see a magic trick go
horribly wrong and be able to throw things at the stage rather than just sit
there, amused enough not to leave.
On the other hand, it’s good to think positively and in that spirit here
are some things to like about AN and DM.
Nobbs: Glen
Close as a man (kind of, more like Glen Close as a silent film actor made of
wood) in a 19th century Irish fable by George Moore adapted for the
screen by John Banville! A movie
about a woman forced to become a man in an ultra-conservative society should
have been great (it also has Brendan Gleason, so it really really should have
been great); but it wasn’t. To
dwell on the positives, there is some great acting here; particularly by Janet
McTeer playing another woman-in-hiding.
But where Nobbs is tortured, she is set free by her disquise and able to
lead a fulfilling life. Maybe the
movie would have been better if Nobbs had been a supporting character to her
much more interesting and uplifting story.
Dangerous Method:
Vigo, Fassbender, Keira Knightley and the director who made the
Fly. So there are definitely some
good moments. To begin with, the
subject matter is fascinating: the
birth of psychoanalysis. The plot,
as told in Jungian archetypes, involves Dr. Jung’s persona treating a
Russian/Jewish hysteric. She’s
beautiful, brilliant, and interested in psychoanalysis and, once Jung’s Self
travels away from Persona into Shadow, goes from patient to colleague to lover. Winding around this story, like a
dragon’s tail over a star, is the oedipal story of Jung’s fractured
relationship with Dr. Freud.
Metaphorical patricide ensues, and the movie ends with a nice, tidy
text-on-black-screen to tell us how it all turned out (shame they didn’t do it
six-feet-under style instead with a speedily aging Jung driving his carriage
away).
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